UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


LECTURES  ON 
MODERN  IDEALISM 

BY 

JOSIAH  EOYCE 


NEW  HAVEN 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON:    HUMPHREY   MILFORD :   OXFORD   UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY 

YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


First  published,  December,  1919. 

Second  printing,  March,  1923. 

Third  printing,  May,  1934. 


All  rights  reserved.  This  book  may  not  be  reproduced,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  in  any  form  (except  by  reviewers  for  the 
public  press),  without  written  permission  from  the  publishers. 


Education 
Library 

13 

3.74  ef 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Editor's  Preface  ......     vii 

Lecture         I.    Kant's  Conception  of  the  Nature 
and  the  Conditions  of  Knowl- 
edge      .....       1 

Lecture       II.     The  Modification  of  Kant's   Con- 

ception of  the  Self          .         .31 

Lecture  III.  The  Concept  of  the  Absolute  and 

the  Dialectical  Method  .  .  63 

Lecture  IV.  The  Dialectical  Method  in  Schell- 

ing  .....  87 

Lecture        V.     Schelling's    Transcendental    Ideal- 

ism        .         .         .        -  .         .   115 

Lecture  VI.  Hegel's  Phaenomenologie  des 

Geistes  .....  136 

Lecture  VII.  Types  of  Individual  and  Social 
Consciousness  in  Hegel's  Phae- 
nomenologie ....  161 

Lecture  VIII.  The  Dialectical  Progress  of  Hegel's 

Phaenomenologie  .  .  .  187 

Lecture      IX.    Hegel's  Mature  System          .         .  213 

Lecture  X.  Later  Problems  of  Idealism  and  its 

Present  Position  .  .  .232 

Index  .  261 


3694SO 


THE  JAMES  WESLEY  COOPER 
MEMORIAL  PUBLICATION  FUND 

THE  present  volume  is  the  third  work  published  by  the 
Yale  University  Press  on  the  James  Wesley  Cooper  Me- 
morial Publication  Fund.  This  Foundation  was  estab- 
lished March  30,  1918,  by  a  gift  to  Yale  University  from 
Mrs.  Ellen  H.  Cooper  in  memory  of  her  husband,  Rev. 
James  Wesley  Cooper,  D.D.,  who  was  born  in  New 
Haven,  Connecticut,  October  6,  1842,  and  died  in  New 
York  City,  March  16,  1916.  Dr.  Cooper  was  a  member 
of  the  Class  of  1865,  Yale  College,  and  for  twenty-five 
years  pastor  of  the  South  Congregational  Church  of  New 
Britain,  Connecticut.  For  thirty  years  he  was  a  corporate 
member  of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for 
Foreign  Missions  and  from  1885  until  the  time  of  his 
death  was  a  Fellow  of  Yale  University,  serving  on  the 
Corporation  as  one  of  the  Successors  of  the  Original 
Trustees. 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

THE  lectures  here  published  were  first  delivered  at 
the  Johns  Hopkins  University  in  1906  under  the 
title  "Aspects  of  Post-Kantian  Idealism."  They 
were,  in  their  present  form  at  least,  not  originally  in- 
tended for  publication,  but  a  note,  dated  1907,  found 
among  Professor  Royce's  manuscripts  mentions  these 
"Baltimore  Lectures"  as  material  "worth  publishing." 
This  entitles  them  to  head  the  list  of  his  posthumous 
works.  Written  as  they  were  for  oral  delivery  the  lectures 
required  much  revision ;  the  editor  hopes  he  has  not  used 
his  pen  too  freely. 

The  subject-matter  of  these  lectures  is  one  that,  in  a 
more  biographical  way,  has  already  been  treated  in  The 
Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy.  The  present  exposition  of 
post-Kantian  idealism,  however,  is  by  no  means  a  repe- 
tition of  the  former  one.  In  the  earlier  book,  in  which 
the  charm  and  the  depth  of  Royce's  writing  reach  per- 
haps their  happiest  union,  the  interest  is  general  rather 
than  technical,  the  tone  is  popular  rather  than  profes- 
sional. It  contains  a  rapid  survey  and  not  a  detailed 
analysis  of  the  period  in  question.  Yet  no  other  work  of 
his  exhibits  perhaps  in  the  same  degree  "the  glory  of 
words,"  the  art  of  vivid  phrasing,  the  gift  of  graphic 
and  pleasing  metaphor,  the  skill  of  forcing  subtle  and 
difficult  ideas  into  luminous  and  concrete  expression.  It 
is  indeed  one  of  the  finest  feats  of  Royce's  reflective 

vii 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

imagination.  As  a  work  of  deep  speculation  touched  with 
warm  feeling,  of  historical  research  cast  in  original 
mould,  the  book  has  a  unique  and  permanent  place  in 
our  philosophic  literature. 

To  literary  distinction  such  as  the  Spirit  of  Modern 
Philosophy  possesses  the  present  lectures  can  evidently 
lay  no  claim.  In  range  and  depth,  however,  they  surpass 
the  chronicle  of  the  same  period  in  the  earlier  volume. 
There  we  have  but  a  brief  recital  of  the  main  phases  of 
post-Kantian  doctrine,  here  an  examination  of  its  his- 
torical foundation,  its  logical  roots,  its  human  as  well 
as  its  technical  motives.  The  selection  of  topics  is  here 
more  rigorous  and  the  interest  more  prevailingly  theo- 
retical. Moreover,  what  is  here  deliberately  avoided  is 
the  familiar  and  conventional  reproduction  of  post-Kant- 
ian thought.  The  usual  method  of  the  usual  textbooks 
is  here  not  repeated.  In  vain  do  we  here  look  for  the 
hackneyed  themes  of  a  hundred  histories  of  philosophy. 
Royce  does  not  seek  the  successors  of  Kant  in  the  obvious 
tracts  of  ideas.  He  searches  for  them  in  the  neglected 
aspects,  the  buried  documents,  the  forgotten  theses. 
These  reveal  to  him  the  true  meaning  of  their  teachings ; 
these  disclose  to  him  the  spirit  of  the  post-Kantian  move- 
ment. In  the  early  works  of  Schelling,  for  instance, 
Royce  finds  the  pulse  of  the  dialectical  method,  and  in 
the  Phenomenology  rather  than  in  the  Logic  he  discovers 
the  soul  of  Hegel.  And,  though  the  present  study  is 
wanting  in  completeness,  there  is  no  shirking  of  the  most 
difficult  problems  but  rather  a  choosing  of  them  and  a 
discussion  of  them  with  a  power,  adequacy  and  clear- 
ness which,  as  we  look  about,  Royce  alone  seemed  able 
to  summon  to  such  a  task. 

We  have  particular  reason  to  value  at  this  moment  a 
viii 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

dispassionate  estimate  of  that  phase  of  philosophy  which, 
like  German  music,  must  suffer  through  the  retrospective 
judgment  of  the  war.  During  the  present  generation  it 
seems  difficult  to  approach  without  prejudice  the  pro- 
ducts of  German  genius.  The  war  may  be  said  to  have 
created  a  "German  problem."  Shall  we  condemn  and 
approve  uncritically?  A  double  evaluation  of  Germany 
seems  at  first  natural  enough.  Why  not  condemn  her 
war  and  her  war  lords,  and  admire  her  philosophy  ?  Un- 
fortunately the  boundary  between  her  war  and  her  phi- 
losophy is  not  easy  to  define.  The  treacherous  onslaught 
upon  the  peace  of  the  world  in  1914  was  no  isolated  phe- 
nomenon. It  was  the  outcome  of  a  definite  theory  of  life. 
The  hypothesis  of  continuity  in  German  culture — a 
culture  largely  fashioned  by  technical  philosophy — was 
one  which  during  the  war  had  its  protagonists  alike 
among  defenders  and  opponents  of  Germany.  The  apolo- 
gist apologized  for  all  things  German ;  in  the  eyes  of  the 
accuser  everything  Teutonic  appeared  tainted.  It  was 
not  enough  to  find  Germany  guilty  of  this  iniquitous 
war,  the  guilt  must  be  fixed  upon  her  whole  past  civiliza- 
tion. Similarly,  it  was  not  sufficient  to  appreciate  her 
past  admirable  achievements,  her  deeds  in  the  war  must 
also,  since  they  were  German,  be  the  embodiments  of  the 
same  admirable  qualities.  The  major  premise  was  the 
same  in  both  cases.  Beginning  with  the  assumption  of  a 
continuous  German  civilization,  one  concluded  that  it 
was  either  continuously  bad  or  continuously  good.  Ger- 
many's past  was  made  responsible  for  her  present 
crimes;  or  her  present  iniquities  were  cleansed  in  the 
stream  of  her  glorious  past.  Thus  it  happened  that  the 
idealism  of  Kant,  of  Fichte,  of  Hegel  became  a  matter 
of  passionate  denunciation  or  apology.  And  the  books 

iz 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

on  German  philosophy  written  during  the  war,  instinct 
as  they  are  with  a  partisan  spirit,  can  have  scarcely  more 
than  an  ephemeral  value. 

An  unbiased  and  trustworthy  study  of  German  ideal- 
ism is,  therefore,  a  most  notable  bequest  to  the  present 
bewildered  generation.  It  is  all  the  more  notable  as  com- 
ing from  one  who  was  destined  to  articulate  the  Ameri- 
can conscience  at  a  time  of  moral  perplexity.  He  who 
could  with  such  profound  sympathy  interpret  German 
thought  showed  no  hesitancy  in  characterizing  Germany 
as  "the  wilful  and  deliberate  enemy  of  the  human  race" 
when  she,  in  his  opinion,  assumed  that  role.  Germany  was 
thus  judged,  not  by  one  who  disparaged  or  belittled,  but 
by  one  who  knew  and  cherished  the  ideals  of  her  past. 
Indeed,  this  very  attitude  of  sympathy  towards  German 
civilization  of  the  past  intensified  his  righteous  indigna- 
tion. The  rejection  and  betrayal  of  her  own  ideals  con- 
stituted for  Royce  the  crime  of  recent  Germany.  Because 
of  his  deep  appreciation  of  German  idealism  he  was  in- 
evitably led  to  denounce  the  denial  of  it  by  the  German 
state. 

The  view  of  the  post-Kantian  self  or  Absolute,  as  in- 
terpreted by  Royce,  throws  light  on  the  discrepancy  be- 
tween the  earlier  idealism  and  humanism  of  Germany 
and  her  later  realism  and  militarism.  The  post-Kantian 
Absolute  is  no  national  or  tribal  deity.  "The  post- 
Kantian  idealism,"  Royce  summarizes  at  the  close  of 
Lecture  II,  "was  noteworthy  in  its  analysis  of  the  condi- 
tions of  knowledge.  But  ...  it  was  still  more  note- 
worthy in  its  development  of  social  concepts,  and  in  its 
decidedly  fruitful  study  of  the  relations  which  bind  the 
individual  self  to  that  unity  of  selfhood  which  includes 
all  individuals."  The  unity  of  selfhood  which  includes 

x 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

all  individuals — this  was  the  post-Kantian  ideal ;  and  this 
ideal  of  her  classic  philosophers  modern  Germany  chose 
to  betray.  The  eternal  values  which  in  Kant  and  his  suc- 
cessors possess  universal  meaning  and  dignity  were  coz- 
ened by  the  imperial  state  into  a  degrading  tribal  serv- 
ice. Thus,  what  one  may  perhaps  venture  to  call  a  Social 
Absolute,  universal  and  supernational  in  its  significance, 
must  be  contrasted  with  the  political  and  national  ab- 
solutism that  dominated  latter-day  Germany.  When  and 
how  a  spiritual  social  order,  viewed  as  a  universal  com- 
munity, became  transformed  into  a  bureaucratic  im- 
perial state  is  a  matter  of  detailed  historical  study.  That 
Hegel 's  later  doctrines,  mutilated  and  perverted,  contrib- 
uted not  a  little  to  the  process  of  Germany's  self-es- 
trangement is  common  knowledge.  The  merit  of  Royce's 
lectures  on  Hegel  consists  in  replacing  the  "bureau- 
cratic ' '  tradition  which  has  long  occupied  the  field  in  dis- 
cussions of  Hegel,  both  popular  and  professional,  by  a 
more  adequate  interpretation.  The  "World-Spirit"  of 
Hegel 's  philosophy,  as  Royce  shows,  is  indeed  destined  to 
assume,  in  its  "transmigrations,"  incomplete  and  defec- 
tive forms,  which  must  be  transcended.  That  the  state, 
however,  in  all  its  phases,  from  its  provincial  to  its  most 
imperialistic  manifestations,  is  one  of  the  defective  forms 
to  be  transcended,  is  Hegel's  explicit  teaching  upon 
which  Royce,  in  his  analysis  of  the  Phenomenology,  has 
laid  sufficient  stress.  For  the  early  Hegel  the  state  is  an 
inevitable  stage  but  not  the  goal  of  human  progress. 

The  view  of  the  post-Kantian  Absolute  as  a  univer- 
sal community  is  not  without  interest  for  Royce's  men- 
tal biography.  His  own  doctrine  of  the  community, 
though  on  its  epistemological  side  intimately  bound  up 
with  Peirce's  theory  of  interpretation,  is  metaphysi- 

xi 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

cally  not  unrelated  to  the  post-Kantian  notion  of  a  social 
Absolute.  The  social  motive  is  Royce's  most  character- 
istic motive.  It  inspired  most  of  his  independent  and 
original  thinking.  And  it  is  the  same  motive  which  ac- 
counts in  no  small  measure  for  his  intellectual  attach- 
ment to  the  idealism  of  Kant 's  successors. 

J.  LOEWENBERG. 

Berkeley,  California,  July,  1919. 


Xil 


LECTURE  I. 

KANT'S   CONCEPTION   OF   THE   NATURE   AND 
THE  CONDITIONS  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 

IN  these  lectures,  I  already  presuppose  some  acquaint- 
ance with  the  general  history  of  modern  philosophy, 
and  with  at  least  an  elementary  knowledge  of  the 
doctrine  of  Kant.  I  wish  to  offer  a  partial  introduction  to 
the  study  of  post-Kantian  idealism.  I  shall  not  indeed 
attempt  to  tell  in  any  regular  order,  or  to  develop  in  any 
detail,  the  history  of  philosophy  since  Kant,  nor  shall  I 
portray  any  entire  period  of  that  philosophy.  I  shall 
confine  myself  to  considering  selections  from  the  litera- 
ture of  modern  idealism,  to  presenting  illustrations  of 
the  problems  in  question,  and  to  indicating  how  idealism 
is  related  to  some  of  the  other  tendencies  of  nineteenth- 
century  thought.  Even  when  thus  limited,  the  task  is,  as 
we  shall  see,  large  enough. 

By  the  term  post-Kantian  idealism,  we  name  a  group 
of  philosophical  movements  which  grew  out  of  the  study 
of  Kant's  doctrine,  and  which  are,  therefore,  closely  re- 
lated to  it,  but  which  are  usually,  in  one  or  another  re- 
spect, opposed  to  certain  of  Kant's  most  characteristic 
tendencies.  These  movements  form  a  very  varied  collec- 
tion, and  cannot  be  described  as  the  work  of  any  single 
school  of  mutually  agreeing  thinkers.  The  principal 
earlier  representatives  of  such  idealism,  viz.,  Fichte, 
Schelling,  and  Hegel,  were  already  men  of  highly  con- 

1 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
trasted  types,  and  of  very  marked  varieties  of  opinion. 
A  later  representative,  Schopenhauer,  regarded  all  three 
philosophers  just  mentioned  with  an  aversion  whose  mo- 
tives were  both  doctrinal  and  personal.  Schopenhauer, 
despite  his  own  form  of  post-Kantian  idealism,  laid  great 
stress  upon  his  own  hostility  to  the  teachings  and  to  the 
influence  of  these  his  idealistic  predecessors.  Hegel  was, 
of  all  the  philosophers  thus  far  mentioned,  the  most  suc- 
cessful in  organizing  a  school.  But  after  his  death  his  fol- 
lowers divided  themselves  into  very  distinct  groups ;  and 
to  the  Hegelian  school,  in  its  later  developments,  have 
been  reckoned  men  who  varied  in  opinion  all  the  way 
from  the  most  marked  orthodoxy  to  a  pronounced  mate- 
rialism. In  more  recent  times,  post-Kantian  idealism,  in- 
fluencing thought  in  France,  in  England,  and  in  this 
country,  has  led  to  a  complication  of  opinions  which  it 
would  require  many  courses  of  lectures  to  unravel.  A  list 
of  those  who,  with  more  or  less  obvious  justice,  might  be 
called  in  some  sense  post-Kantian  idealists,  would  in- 
clude Cousin,  Strauss,  Fechner,  Lotze,  von  Hartmann, 
T.  H.  Green,  Bradley,  and  even  Martineau,  despite  his 
pronounced  hostility  to  Hegelianism.  And,  in  a  measure, 
most  of  our  own  American  pragmatists  could  be  viewed 
as  the  outcome  of  the  same  movement.  Where  such  varie- 
ties of  opinion  are  in  question,  there  is  no  longer  any 
reason  to  speak  of  a  school  at  all.  Post-Kantian  idealism, 
viewed  in  its  whole  range  of  manifestation,  is  not  any  one 
theory  so  much  as  a  tendency,  a  spirit,  a  disposition  to 
interpret  life  and  human  nature  and  the  world  in  a  cer- 
tain general  way — a  tendency,  meanwhile,  so  plastic,  so 
manifold,  so  lively,  as  to  be  capable  of  appealing  to  ex- 
tremely different  minds,  and  of  expressing  itself  in 
numerous  mutually  hostile  teachings. 

2 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

The  expressions  of  this  tendency  have,  consequently, 
been  of  quite  as  much  importance  for  the  history  of  liter- 
ature, of  social  movements,  and  even  of  politics,  as  for 
the  history  of  technical  philosophy.  Post-Kantian  ideal- 
ism was  prominent  among  the  motives  that  led  Europe 
into  those  revolutionary  political  activities  which  cen- 
tered about  the  year  1848.  Since  that  time  post-Kantian 
idealism  has  had  its  part  in  shaping  the  great  modern 
conflicts  between  individualism  and  socialism.  The  same 
general  tendency  inspired  the  early  growth  of  our  char- 
acteristic recent  interest  in  the  historical  study  and  ap- 
preciation of  human  institutions ;  and  to  the  like  source 
must  be  attributed  many  of  the  theoretical  motives  which 
have  become  united  since  1860  in  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion. In  religion,  the  idealistic  tendency  began  the  large 
process  of  reconstruction  which  within  the  last  seventy 
years  has  so  transformed  both  the  theology  and  the  prac- 
tical methods  of  the  non-Roman  portion  of  Christendom. 
In  fact,  I  think  it  fairly  likely  that  future  historians  will 
look  back  upon  the  history  of  idealism  as  being  that  of  the 
dissolution  of  the  classic  Protestantism.  In  literature, 
post-Kantian  idealism  has  its  large  share  of  responsibility 
for  all  the  varied  forms  of  the  romantic  movement ;  and, 
in  a  similar  way,  the  same  influence  has  been  extended  to 
arts  other  than  literary;  so  that  modern  painting  and 
music  are  not  what  they  would  have  been  without  the 
pervasive  effects  of  idealistic  philosophy. 

It  is  worth  while  then,  to  try  to  understand  this 
movement,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  its  bearing  upon  the 
whole  course  of  modern  life. 

But  while  I  thus  point  out  how  broad  a  field  of  influ- 
ence has  to  be  ascribed  to  post-Kantian  idealism,  I  must 
at  once  admit  that  the  field  which  these  lectures  will  be 

3 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
able  to  cover  is  decidedly  narrow.  For  the  most  part,  our 
study  will  be  confined  to  matters  which  belong  to  de- 
cidedly technical  philosophy.  I  shall  connect  it  with  an 
analysis  of  some  of  the  classic  expressions  of  idealism, 
but  I  shall  not  even  attempt  a  detailed  account  of  the 
system  of  any  one  of  the  great  idealists.  In  my  later  lec- 
tures especially,  I  shall  try  to  cover  ground  which  is  not 
usually  covered  in  the  textbooks  of  the  history  of  phi- 
losophy, leaving  to  the  student's  other  training  the 
responsibility  for  every  more  systematic  view  of  the  his- 
tory of  our  period.  I  shall  be  selective  rather  than  sys- 
tematic, illustrative  rather  than  exhaustive.  Meanwhile, 
my  task  is  not  with  the  history  of  literature,  of  politics  or 
of  religion — closely  bound  up  though  the  story  of  mod- 
ern idealism  is  with  all  three  of  these  sorts  of  human  in- 
terests— but  with  some  of  the  central  problems  of  ideal- 
ism in  their  more  technical  aspects.  My  purpose  will  be 
to  help  you  to  look  at  the  world,  for  a  time,  with  the  eyes 
of  some  one  or  another  of  the  representative  idealists; 
and  to  show,  by  illustrations,  why  it  was  that  these  men 
viewed  things  as  they  did.  The  early  idealists  of  our  post- 
Kantian  period  often  seem,  to  the  novice,  to  resemble, 
according  to  Hegel's  well-known  phrase,  men  who  had 
resolved  to  try  to  walk  about  on  their  heads.  I  want  to 
help  you  to  see  why  these  men  thought  it  worth  while  to 
view  the  world  in  this  inverted  way.  Their  exercise  of 
ingenuity  may  have  been  somewhat  trying  to  their  own 
endurance  and  to  ours.  But  their  influence  was,  as  I  have 
just  pointed  out,  so  manifold  and  so  momentous  that  it 
seems  worth  while  to  come  closer,  for  a  time,  to  their  own 
point  of  view,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  helping  one's 
general  study  of  nineteenth-century  history. 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
I. 

Let  me  begin  our  undertaking  by  calling  your  atten- 
tion to  that  document  upon  which,  as  we  may  forthwith 
assert,  rests  the  entire  process  of  inquiry  which  took 
shape — in  the  early  technically  metaphysical  theories — 
of  post-Kantian  idealism.  For  while  idealism,  in  its  gen- 
eral spirit,  was  indeed,  from  the  very  first,  an  enormously 
complicated  tendency,  due  to  the  revolutionary  move- 
ment, to  individualism,  to  romanticism,  to  the  whole  state 
of  European  civilization — just  as  in  turn  it  reacted  upon 
this  whole  state  of  civilization — still,  the  spirit  of  phil- 
osophical idealism  is  indeed  one  thing,  its  technical  ex- 
pression, in  the  form  of  metaphysical  doctrines,  is  an- 
other. Had  there  never  been  a  Kant,  there  would  no  doubt 
have  been  an  idealistic  movement  in  philosophy  at  the 
outset  of  the  nineteenth  century.  But  its  technical  ex- 
pression would  have  been  very  different  from  that  which 
German  idealism  received  between  1795  and  1830.  As 
matters  actually  stood,  the  speculations  of  Fichte,  of 
Schelling,  of  Hegel,  were  worked  out  under  the  influence 
of  that  formulation  of  problems  which  is  contained  in 
Kant's  writings,  and  especially  in  the  Kantian  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason,  and  above  all,  in  the  central  discussion 
of  that  Critique,  namely,  in  Kant 's  famous  section  called 
by  him  The  Transcendental  Deduction  of  the  Categories. 
Understand  the  issues  stated  in  Kant's  deduction  of  the 
categories  and  you  shall  understand  why  these  later 
men  formulated  their  problems  as  they  did ;  and  then  you 
will  soon  be  on  the  way  towards  seeing  why  they  pro- 
posed the  technical  solutions  which  their  writings  con- 
tain. The  Kantian  deduction  of  the  categories  is  the  por- 
tal to  the  dwelling  of  modern  philosophy.  Some  of  you, 
having  made  previous  efforts  to  grasp  Kant's  meaning, 

5 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

may  regard  that  portal  as  a  pretty  closely  shut  door — 
not  only  closed,  but  perhaps  locked.  And,  in  fact,  the  sec- 
tion of  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  which  I  have 
named  is  notoriously  the  most  difficult  passage  in  a  very 
difficult  book.  But  I  do  not  believe  the  difficulties  in  ques- 
tion to  be  insurmountable.  In  any  case,  if  we  are  to  con- 
sider post-Kantian  idealism  at  all,  in  any  of  its  more 
technical  aspects,  we  must  make  our  beginning  here,  at 
the  doorway.  Otherwise,  if  we  endeavored  to  avoid  such 
an  entrance  to  the  subject,  we  should  be  obliged  to  view 
modern  idealism  as  a  passing  tourist  might  view  a  king's 
palace — wholly  from  without;  or,  in  other  terms,  our 
visit  to  the  dwelling  of  these  modern  thinkers  would  re- 
main, at  best,  a  sort  of  lawn  party.  But  let  us  rather 
enter  the  house. 

My  task  requires,  therefore,  that  I  shall  now  try  to 
portray  Kant's  main  theoretical  problem,  and  the 
solution  which  he  proposed  for  it. 

II. 

Kant  was,  in  his  way,  a  thinker  much  devoted  to  the 
reading  of  the  physical  sciences  as  they  existed  in  his 
time.  He  was  of  course  a  man  of  books,  not  of  experi- 
ments; but  the  general  theories  of  science  had  a  large 
place  in  his  thoughts.  He  was  especially  interested  in  the 
elements  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  physics,  in  the  effort  to 
conceive  the  natural  world  in  mechanical  terms,  and  also 
in  the  attempt  to  distinguish  between  the  fundamental 
concepts  of  the  inorganic  sciences  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
the  organic  sciences  on  the  other.  His  early  writings,  as  is 
well  known,  bear  many  marks  of  this  fundamental  in- 
terest in  the  theories  and  conceptions  of  natural  science. 
He  was  also  a  student  of  metaphysics.  Naturally  indis- 

6 


! 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
posed  to  skepticism,  he  was  still  led,  by  sheer  honesty  of 
reflection,  to  assume,  as  the  years  went  on,  an  increas- 
ingly critical  attitude  towards  all  efforts  at  metaphysical 
construction.  He  was  in  consequence  deeply  impressed  by 
one  very  well-known  anomaly  of  the  history  of  human 
thought,  an  anomaly  no  less  obvious  in  his  day  than  in 
ours.  This  anomaly  lay  in  the  contrast  between  the  suc- 
cess of  the  human  reason  on  the  one  nand,  in  its  efforts 
both  to  master  mathematical  truth  and  to  describe  the 
phenomena  that  come  within  the  range  of  natural  science, 
and  the  failure  of  the  human  reason  on  the  other  hand,  to 
attain  thus  far  to  an  agreement  amongst  the  experts  re- 
garding the  problems  of  metaphysics.  Merely  to  observe 
this  anomaly  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  trivial  of  common- 
places, and  was  such  in  Kant's  time.  Every  scoffer  at 
philosophy  delights  to  point  out  the  contrast  in  question ; 
and  nobody  doubts  that  it  exists.  But  for  Kant  this  con- 
trast was  a  matter  neither  for  scoffing  nor  for  discourage- 
ment. It  furnished  a  problem  for  what  Kant  called  criti- 
cal philosophy.  Adapting  a  famous  phrase  of  Spinoza's, 
we  may  say  that,  to  Kant's  mind,  this  contrast  between 
the  success,  both  of  the  empirical  sciences  and  of  math- 
ematics, and  the  failure  of  metaphysics,  was  something 
neither  to  be  wept  over,  nor  to  be  laughed  over,  but  to  be 
understood.  It  was  precisely  his  effort  to  understand  why 
the  mathematical  and  the  physical  sciences  are  possible, 
while  the  researches  of  his  own  and  of  former  times  had 
been  doomed  to  failure — it  was  this  effort,  I  say,  which 
led  Kant  to  formulate  his  critical  philosophy. 

A  critical  philosophy,  in  Kant's  sense  of  the  term,  is 
neither  a  constructive  metaphysical  theory  of  the  ulti- 
mate nature  of  things,  nor,  like  a  modern  system  of  Her- 
bert Spencer 's  type,  a  summary  of  the  results  of  physical 

7 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
science.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  systematic  inquiry  into 
the  nature  and  limits  of  human  knowledge.  It  is  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  study  of  the  problem  which  Locke  pro- 
pounded, viz.,  the  problem:  What  are  we  men  fitted  to 
know? 

III. 

To  this  problem,  once  stated,  an  answer  readily  occurs 
to  all  our  minds — an  answer  which  in  our  own  day  has 
become  a  commonplace  of  popular  discussion.  This  an- 
swer is,  '1!W>  am  fittml  tn  knowjghnt  our  experience 
teaches  us."  This  answer  to  the  question  regarding  the 
limits  of  knowledge  had  been  already  set  forth  at  length 
by  Locke.  The  English  school  of  thinkers  had  repeatedly 
emphasized  its  importance;  and  Hume  had  been  led  by 
the  acceptance  of  this  answer  to  very  skeptical  conclu- 
sions regarding  the  scope  and  the  limits  of  our  assured 
knowledge.  But  whether  one  viewed  the  matter  skepti- 
cally, or  felt  more  cheerful,  as  most  of  the  partisans  of  ex- 
perience always  do  feel,  regarding  the  wealth  and  the 
depth  of  insight  that  human  experience  can  give  us  con- 
cerning our  world,  this  answer,  ' '  Experience  supplies  us 
with  all  our  accessible  knowledge,"  might  seem  at  once 
to  furnish  the  sufficient  reason  why  the  physical  sciences 
had  already  made,  even  before  Kant's  time,  such  great 
advances,  and  why,  on  the  other  hand,  the  metaphysicians 
whose"  fortunes  Kant  had  so  carefully  followed  had  failed 
to  come  to  any  assured  agreement.  It  would  seem,  then, 
that  one  might  try  to  be  contented  with  saying  that  physi- 
cal science  had  succeeded,  as  ever  since  Kant 's  time  it  has 
gone  on  succeeding,  because  it  investigates  and  exactly 
reports  what  Hume  called  matters  of  fact,  that  is,  facts 
of  experience.  The  metaphysicians  had  failed,  so  one 

8 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

might  undertake  to  say,  just  because  they  had  sought  to 
discover  ultimate  truth  regarding  the  universe  as  a  whole, 
about  the  soul,  and  about  God,  while  our  experience  does 
not  present  to  us  the  whole  world,  nor  exhibit  to  us 
anything  ultimate. 

Were  this  all  that  there  is  to  say  about  the  nature  and 
limits  of  human  knowledge,  Kant's  work  would  already 
have  been  done  for  him  by  Hume.  There  would  be  noth- 
ing new  left  for  him  to  say.  As  a  fact,  however,  while 
Kant  accepted  this  account  of  the  reason  why  the  natural 
sciences  succeed,  and  why  metaphysical  researches  had  so 
far  failed,  as  far  as  this  account  went,  he  still  could  not 
regard  the  account  itself  as,  in  this  form,  an  adequate  ex- 
pression of  what  those  who  accept  it  have  tried  to  portray. 
This  account  was,  in  Kant's  eyes,  true  but  incomplete.  It 
was  incomplete  for  two  reasons.  It  did  not  adequately 
analyze  what  the  term  experience  means.  And  further- 
more, it  did  not  take  account  of  the  way  in  which,  side  by 
side  and  in  union  with  experience,  the  human  reason  is 
able  to  do  profitable  work  whose  results  are  not  mere 
reports  of  the  facts  of  experience. 

Let  us  first  consider  the  second  of  these  two  senses  in 
which  the  foregoing  account  is,  for  Kant,  incomplete. 
There  exist  the  mathematical  sciences.  These  sciences  are 
the  results  of  certain  principles  which,  as  Kant  main- 
tained, do  not  depend  upon  experience.  Arithmetic  and 
geometry,  as  he  always  insisted,  are  therefore  not  empiri- 
cal sciences.  They  deal  with  what  are  not,  in  Hume's 
sense,  matters  of  fact.  Hume  himself  had  asserted  in  his 
Essays  that  arithmetic  and  geometry  deal,  not  indeed 
directly  with  matters  of  fact,  but  rather  with  relations  of 
ideas,  ideas  themselves  being,  according  to  Hume,  mere 
shadows,  or  images,  of  matters  of  fact.  Kant,  however, 

9 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
could  not  accept  this  interpretation  of  the  nature  of 
mathematics^  For  him,  the  mathematical  sciences  were 
a  pjJAvi  instructions.  They  do  not  merely  report  what 
we  find  in  the  worlcTbf  experience ;  they  determine  on  the 
contrary  what  must  be,  in  the  realms  of  number  and  of 
space.  Therefore  they  inevitably  arouse  afresh  the  ques- 
tion :  Why  can  the  human  reason  determine  a  priori  what 
must  be  in  the  realms  of  number  and  of  space — sure  that 
experience  can  never  contradict  the  demonstration — • 
while  nevertheless  this  same  human  reason  fails  to  deter- 
mine what  must  be  in  the  much  more  precious  realm  of 
metaphysical  truth  ?  Both  realms  would  at  first  sight  ap- 
pear to  be  capable  of  exploration  by  reason,  in  case  either 
of  them  is  amenable  to  reason.  For  if  we  can  get  any- 
where free  from  the  bondage  of  experience,  why  should 
we  not  everywhere  be  free  to  follow  reason  into  the  re- 
gions of  necessary  and  a  priori  truth  ?  If  the  geometer  is 
able  to  escape  from  the  duty  of  merely  reporting  matters 
of  fact,  if  he  can  discover  a  priori  and  necessary  truth 
about  triangles  and  circles,  why  might  not  the  theologian 
or  the  philosopher  of  the  soul  hope  to  learn  about  ulti- 
mate truth  regarding  their  topics?  Is  not  the  soul  of 
much  more  value  than  many  triangles  ? 

The  difference,  then,  between  the  fortunes  of  the  math- 
ematician and  those  of  the  metaphysician,  needed,  for 
Kant,  a  special  explanation,  quite  as  much  as  did  the  dif- 
ference between  the  success  of  the  students  of  natural 
science  and  the  failure  of  the  philosophers.  And  mere 
empiricism  appeared  to  Kant  to  be  inadequate  to  furnish 
such  an  explanation.  Hence  a  new  theory  of  knowledge 
was,  in  his  opinion,  necessary. 

And  now  as  to  the  other  inadequacy  of  Hume 's  account 
of  human  knowledge.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  all  the  truth 

10 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
which  we  have  learned  about  nature,  or  about  the  uni- 
verse, is  empirical  truth.  Kant,  as  I  have  just  said,  ac- 
cepted that  view.  "Nur  in  der  Erfahrung  ist  Wahrheit," 
he  asserted,  in  a  well-known  passage,  and  in  so  far  he 
stood  beside  Hume.  But  when  you  have  said  this  you 
have  only  begun  your  theory  regarding  the  true  nature  of 
scientific  knowledge.  Experience  is  your  guide  ?  Granted. 
But  what  is  experience  ?  Is  it  mere  sense  impression  ?  No, 
experience,  in  a  rational  being,  is  a  process  not  merely  of 
receiving  sense  impressions  but  of  interpreting  them. 
Thought,  without  the  aid  of  sense,  is  indeed  empty ;  but 
sense  without  the  aid  of  thought  is,  in  Kant's  words, 
blind.  Whoever  sees  without  thinking,  sees  nothing. 
Therefore  you  cannot  adequately  understand  what  our 
experience  is  unless  you  analyze  the  part  that  our  nature 
as  thinking  beings  plays  in  organizing  our  experience.  If, 
however,  you  make  such  an  analysis,  you  discover,  accord- 
ing to  Kant,  that  our  experience  means  something  to  us 
solely  because  we  constantly  interpret  its  data  in  terms 
of  certain  ideal  constructions  or,  (in  Kant's  phraseol- 
ogy,) schemata  of  our  own, — schemes  due,  in  their  gen- 
eral outline,  to  the  form  of  our  own  intelligence.  It  is  the 
business  of  a  sound  theory  of  knowledge  to  analyze  this 
form  of  our  intelligence,  and  to  show  how  its  schematic 
constructions  coalesce  with  our  sensations  to  form  our 
actual  and  intelligible  experience.  Hereby  we  shall  prove, 
according  to  Kant,  that  the  a  priori  element  in  human 
knowledge,  due  as  it  is  to  the  very  form  of  our  own  intel- 
lect, is  everywhere  exemplified  in  the  unavoidable  struc- 
ture of  our  experience.  No  theory  of  knowledge  which 
fails  thus  to  analyze  experience  can  be  adequate  to  show 
us  why  our  natural  sciences  are  so  successful. 

Here,  then,  lie  the  two  inadequacies  of  Hume's  empiri- 

11 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
cism,  and  of  all  similar  views,  as  Kant  understands  them : 
such  views  do  not  show  why  the  mathematical  sciences 
are  possible;  and  further  do  not  define  what  is  meant  ~by 
experience. 

Now  Kant  maintains  that  in  solving,  through  his  the- 
ory of  knowledge,  the  problem,  "What  is  experience?" 
he  has  also  solved  the  other  problem, ' '  How  are  the  math- 
ematical sciences  possible?"  The  adequate  answer  to 
the  larger  question  answers  also  the  other  and  more  ele- 
mentary one.  For,  in  Kant's  opinion,  our  intelligent 
experience  depends  for  its  entire  relational  structure 
upon  those  forms  of  our  intelligence  to  which  reference 
has  already  been  made.  Of  these  forms  two,  namely  space 
and  time,  are  called  by  Kant  the  forms  of  our  faculty 
perception,  or  in  other  words,  the  forms  of  our  sen- 
sibility. They  characterize  us  precisely  in  so  far  as  we 
are  observers  of  our  world,  i.e.,  in  so  far  as  we  are  pas- 
sive onlookers  upon  its  phenomena.  Yet  these  forms  of 
our  perceptive  faculty  constitute  the  foundation  upon 
which  our  active  intelligence  bases  all  of  its  procedure  in 
interpreting  the  data  of  our  senses.  All  of  our  before- 
mentioned  constructive  schemata,  that  is,  all  those  ideal 
outlines  of  objective  structure,  in  terms  of  which  we  in- 
terpret the  facts  of  sense,  are  temporal  in  their  nature. 
Because  of  the  form  of  our  sensibility,  we  view  whatever 
is  presented  to  us  as  a  complex  of  events  in  time.  Further- 
more, every  form  of  an  outer,  or  physical  event,  is  also 
viewed  by  us,  in  consequence  of  the  form  of  our  sensi- 
bility, as  spatial,  that  is,  as  a  fact  that  is  somewhere  in 
space.  And  all  of  this  temporal  and  spatial  form  of 
experience  is,  according  to  Kant,  due,  not  to  anything 
external  to  the  human  mind,  but  solely  to  our  own  nature 
ad  knowing  beings ;  and  this  form  of  our  sensibility  is  an 

12 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
a    priori    condition    upon    which    all    our    experience 
depends. 

Now  mathematical  science  is  simply  that  science  which 
deals  with  so  much  of  truth  as  is  determined  merely  by 
the  existence  and  the  nature  of  these  forms  of  our  sensi- 
bility. Mathematical  science  therefore  deals,  and  deals 
a  priori,  with  the  forms  or  types  to  which  all  of  our  sensi- 
ble experience  must  conform.  For  since  these  types  are 
a  priori,  i.e.,  since  they  belong  to  the  very  conditions  of 
all  our  experience,  and  express  our  own  knowing  nature, 
mathematical  science  has  also  to  be  a  priori.  The  things 
that  we  are  to  experience  must  come  to  us  so  as  to  agree 
with  the  forms  of  our  sensibility.  Otherwise  we  should 
not  experience  these  things  at  all.  But  the  forms  of  the 
sensibility  have  not,  in  their  turn,  to  conform  themselves 
to  any  prior  facts  of  sense  experience.  The  latter  may  be 
what  you  will.  Whatever  they  are,  they  will  have  to  get 
into  space,  or  at  least  into  time,  or  else  we,  constituted  as 
we  are,  shall  know  naught  about  them.  Hence  mathemat- 
ical science,  which  deals  with  space  and  time  rela- 
tions as  such,  will  need  no  empirical  confirmation,  and 
will  use  none.  And  yet  the  very  success  of  mathematical 
science  will  be  a  sort  of  indirect  confirmation  of  the  doc- 
trine, "Nur  in  der  Erfahrung  ist  Wahrheit."  For  the 
only  reason  why  we  know  time  and  space,  geometry  and 
arithmetic,  so  well,  is  because  the  sciences  of  time  and 
space  deal  with  what  the  very  nature  of  our  knowing  self 
alone  determines,  namely,  the  form  of  our  own  experi- 
ence. In  order  to  get  a  knowledge  of  the  shape  of  an  egg- 
shell you  are  not,  indeed,  dependent  upon  a  study  of  the 
contents  of  the  egg.  And,  in  a  loosely  analogous  way,  for 
a  knowledge  of  geometrical  truth  you  are  not  dependent 
upon  a  study  of  physical  phenomena  as  such.  But  as  the 

13 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
only  business  of  an  eggshell  is  to  contain  the  egg,  so  the 
only  value  of  time  and  of  space  is  that  they  are  forms  of 
our  human  sensibility.  "We  can  study  them  a  priori;  for 
they  are  of  our  own  very  life.  All  study  of  them  is  but  an 
analysis  of  the  forms  of  the  knowing  self — not  an  excur- 
sion into  the  realms  of  absolute  reality.  Here  lies  the 
reason,  according  to  Kant,  why  the  mathematician,  who 
studies  in  a  purely  rational  way  the  a  priori  forms  to 
which  all  of  our  experience  must  conform,  succeeds,  while 
the  metaphysician,  who  looks  for  the  road  to  an  absolute 
reality,  fails.  So  much,  then,  for  mathematical  truth. 

IV. 

One  thus  sees,  in  general,  that  for  Kant  the  great  prob- 
lem of  philosophy  is  the  analysis  of  the  conditions  upon 
which  all  our  experience  depends.  Two  assertions  char- 
acterize his  fundamental  position  with  regard  to  this 
problem.  One  is  the  assertion  that  the  conditions,  upon 
which  the  form,  the  structure,  the  organization  of  our 
experience  depends,  are  themselves  not  empirical,  are 
themselves  not  facts  of  sense,  are  not  to  be  brought  to  our 
notice  as  we  learn  about  single  physical  phenomena,  but 
are  a  priori,  are  for  us  necessary,  are  conditions  without 
which  we  could  not  conceive  or  define  or  find  or  compre- 
hend any  facts  whatever,  and  so  are  to  be  discovered 
through  a  reflective  analysis  of  our  own  process  of  knowl- 
edge. The  other  assertion,  so  potent  for  all  the  develop- 
ment of  the  later  idealism,  is  this,  that  when  we  study 
these  forms  of  our  experience,  we  are  learning  nothing 
whatever  about  the  ultimate  nature  of  anything  that 
exists  beyond  the  knowing  self,  but  are  just  learning 
about  the  self  and  about  its  equipment  for  its  life  of 
knowledge.  And  that,  according  to  Kant,  is  the  reason 

14 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
why  any  metaphysical  knowledge  of  the  ultimate  nature 
of  things  beyond  the  self  is  impossible. 

These  two  assertions  of  Kant's  go  very  closely  bound 
together.  What  the  moon  is,  or  what  yonder  remote  fixed 
star  is,  or  what  are  the  laws  of  physiology — all  such 
things  you  learn  by  experience  and  by  experience  only. 
In  so  far  Kant  is  quite  as  much  an  empiricist  as  is  any 
other  student  of  science.  But  what  experience  itself  is,  so 
he  insists,  you  cannot  learn  through  mere  experience. 
That  you  must  learn  by  reflection.  And  reflection  con- 
cerns itself  with  the  self,  for  whom,  and  in  whose  process 
of  knowledge,  the  whole  realm  of  experience  finds  its 
place.  For  the  remotest  star  is  a  phenomenon,  a  fact  in  the 
experience  of  the  self.  And  the  self  has  its  own  form  of 
synopsis  and  of  interpretation,  in  terms  of  which  it  sees 
and  thinks  all  of  these  facts  in  whatever  unity  it  dis- 
covers them  to  possess.  When  you  consider  however  that 
unity,  in  which  all  facts  of  experience  share,  only  the 
self  can  tell  you  what  that  unity  is  to  be.  The  two  asser- 
tions then :  There  is  knowledge  a  priori ;  and  such  knowl- 
edge tells  us  only  about  the  nature  of  the  knowing  self, 
are  closely  linked  in  Kant's  mind. 

Let  us  express  the  matter  otherwise:  The  concept  of 
experience,  strange  to  say,  is  itself  not  an  empirical  con- 
cept. An  empirical  concept  is  one  that  you  form  through 
observing  facts  of  the  sense  world.  Of  a  star,  of  a  camel, 
of  a  law  of  nature,  you  have  empirical  concepts  only.  You 
mean,  by  such  facts  of  nature,  facts  actually  or  possibly 
seen,  found,  felt,  observed,  touched,  or  computed,  in 
accordance  with  already  admitted  empirical  rules,  by 
some  human  being,  whose  intelligence,  whose  observation 
and  thinking  you  accept  as  equivalent  to  your  own.  But 
what  human  experience  is,  how  it  is  rendered  intelligible, 

15 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
what  intelligence  is,  what  it  is  to  observe,  to  comprehend, 
to  unify  facts  of  experience — all  this  you  cannot  learn 
merely  by  using  your  senses,  nor  yet  by  intelligently 
observing  phenomena.  The  knowing  self  you  do  not 
observe  as  a  fact  of  nature ;  for  it  is  the  observer  of  all 
natural  facts.  You  learn  of  its  ways  of  knowledge  through 
reflection.  Your  conception  of  its  doings  is  the  conception 
of  the  conditions  which  make  experience  possible.  And 
this  conception  is  not  in  its  turn  derived  from  experience. 
It  is  discovered  by  finding  out  the  a  priori  conditions 
upon  which  experience  depends. 

V. 

We  have  formed  our  first  impression  of  what,  accord- 
ing to  Kant,  the  theory  of  knowledge  has  to  accomplish. 
We  must  now  consider  an  aspect  of  experience  which  our 
sketch  of  the  nature  of  mathematical  truth  has  so  far  not 
brought  to  our  direct  notice.  The  physical  or  empirical 
facts  which  we  all  regard  as  real  are  of  two  sorts.  They 
are,  first,  the  facts  which  get  impressed  upon  us,  from 
moment  to  moment,  by  the  present  disturbance  of  our 
senses.  Such  are  the  sounds  that  now  you  hear,  the  walls 
and  the  people  that  now  you  see.  We  may  call  these  the 
facts  of  present  perception.  Were  you  to  take  all  such 
facts  away,  and  leave  us  senseless,  you  would  certainly 
deprive  us  of  all  touch  with  our  real  world  of  experience. 
But,  secondly,  we  constantly  deal  with  facts  which  are  of 
the  type  that  a  contemporary  writer,  Karl  Pearson,  (who 
seems  to  be  very  imperfectly  aware  of  how  closely  he  in 
this  respect  follows  Kant),  calls  conceptual  constructions. 
Let  me  exemplify :  The  other  side  of  the  moon  is  a  phys- 
ical phenomenon  whose  existence  we  all  of  us  accept ;  we 
should  unhesitatingly  regard  it  as  a  fact  in  the  world  of 

16 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
experience ;  yet  no  man  has  ever  observed  the  other  side 
of  the  moon.  The  interior  of  the  earth  is  a  realm  belong- 
ing to  the  physical  world.  Yet  no  one  has  ever  extended 
his  direct  physical  experience  further  into  the  interior  of 
the  earth  than  mines  and  borings  have  carried  us.  Count- 
less phenomena,  geological,  seismographical,  astronom- 
ical, are  indeed  interpreted  by  us  so  as  to  appear  to  throw 
more  or  less  light  upon  the  physical  constitution  of  the 
earth's  interior.  All  such  interpretations,  however,  are 
conceptual  constructions  which  define  facts  that  we  view 
as  empirical,  while  we  nevertheless  do  not  even  hope  to 
experience  them  in  the  way  in  which  we  define  them.  The 
interior  of  the  earth  is  very  much  hotter  than  any  mine 
or  boring  has  yet  directly  tested,  is  under  far  greater 
pressure  than  we  have  ever  observed  matter  to  be — in 
brief,  is  a  realm  of  phenomena  unlike  those  with  which  we 
are  familiar,  a  realm  in  which  we  believe,  and  believe, 
furthermore,  upon  the  basis  of  experienced  phenomena, 
while  nevertheless  this  strange  realm  of  heat  and  of  high 
pressure  refuses  to  come  within  the  range  of  live  human 
experience.  The  stars,  the  constitution  of  matter,  the  geo- 
logical periods,  the  process  of  evolution,  the  stone  age  in 
Europe — these  are  but  a  few  of  the  regions  of  natural 
fact  which  come  to  our  scientific  knowledge  wholly,  or 
principally,  in  terms  of  conceptual  constructions. 

Now  I  need  not  here  try  to  describe,  with  any  elaborate 
detail,  in  terms  of  what  constructive  processes  we  get 
individual  instances  of  such  .conceptions  as  these.  In  one 
sense,  experience  is  our  only  guide  in  our  efforts  to  define 
such  conceptual  construction.  For  we  get  at  these  con- 
structions, as  we  say,  inductively,  upon  the  basis  of  what 
we  actually  observe.  We  make  hypotheses  that  are  sug- 
gested by  what  we  see  and  find.  We  confirm  or  refute 

17 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
these  hypotheses  by  further  empirical  tests.  We  regard 
these  conceptual  constructions,  moreover,  as  beset  with 
manifold  uncertainties,  as  possessing  at  best  only  some 
higher  or  lower  degree  of  probability,  as  being  in  many 
ways  inferior  in  their  assurance,  to  the  certainty  that  is 
possessed  by  the  present  facts  of  experience.  Yet,  after 
all  is  thus  said  that  can  be  said  about  the  way  in  which  we 
depend  upon  present  experience  as  our  guide  in  the  for- 
mation of  these  conceptual  constructions,  the  fact  remains 
that,  for  us  all,  and  at  any  moment,  the  natural  world 
"with  all  its  stars  and  milky  ways"  is,  in  the  main,  pre- 
cisely a  conceptual  construction,  and  is  no  man's  experi- 
ence. Thus  even  yesterday's  events  are  already  known  to 
you,  when  you  rehearse  them  in  mind,  as  conceptual  con- 
structions. For  they  are  no  longer  there  to  be  observed. 
Nor  will  anybody  ever  observe  them  again.  Tomorrow's 
events  are  also  conceptual  constructions.  Nobody  ob- 
serves them  as  yet.  The  things  in  another  room,  your 
home  while  you  are  away  from  it,  the  contents  of  any 
other  man 's  mind,  all  of  these  matters  are  known  to  you 
in  the  form  of  conceptual  constructions.  If  you  ask  what 
truth  these  conceptual  constructions  possess,  your  answer 
must  at  any  moment  be :  They  possess  a  truth  which  I  at 
least  do  not  observe  or  find  as  a  fact  of  my  experience. 
And  yet,  without  doubt,  you  are  disposed  to  view  all 
these  facts  as  of  the  nature  of  empirical  facts.  When  is 
experience  not  experience  ?  The  answer  is :  When  its  facts 
are  what  most  of  your  acknowledged  facts  of  the  realm 
of  experience  nearly  always  are,  namely,  conceptual  con- 
structions. 

Without  attempting  at  all  to  analyze  exhaustively  the 
inductive  procedure  whereby  such  enlargements  of  our 
momentary  experience  are  obtained,  I  may  call  attention 

18 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

to  two  aspects  of  these  conceptual  constructions  upon 
which  Kant  especially  insists.  ^ 

First,  in  forming  these  constructions,  we  not  only  use, 
with  monotonous  regularity,  time  and  space  as  the  gen- 
eral forms  in  which,  as  we  conceive,  all  these  now  unob- 
7 

served  phenomena  that  we  think  to  be  real  find  their 
places,  but  we  also  employ,  with  equal  monotony,  certain 
ways  of  conceiving  things,  certain  constructive  types,  cer- 
tain forms  of  thought,  which  Kant  calls  categories.  In 
terms  of  these  categories  we  draw  the  ground-plan,  the 
schema,  the  outline  of  possible  reality,  to  which  all  the  j 
objects  of  our  conceived  natural  world  are  to  conform. 
We  fill  out  this  schema  by  consulting  our  actual  sense 
experience.  Without  some  such  sense  materials,  and  with- 
out images  formed  after  the  model  of  sensory  experiences, 
we  should  have  no  means  of  defining  the  hypothetical 
facts  that  are  to  fill  out  this  schema.  But  without  cate- 
gories, that  is,  general  ways  of  conceiving  the  structures 
of  things,  we  should  have  no  schema  to  fill  out.  Consider 
for  a  moment  some  of  these  categories  or  thought  forms. 
Whatever  object  we  conceive,  as  for  instance  the  moon  or 
the  earth's  crust,  we  conceive  as  consisting  of  single,  i.e., 
of  more  or  less  elementary  parts,  the  units  that  make  it 
up.  Of  such  units  we  conceive  that  pluralities,  complexes, 
or  assemblages  exist.  These  complexes  in  sufficient  num- 
ber form  systems,  such  as  an  organism,  or  a  planet,  or  a 
solar  system  exemplify.  Such  systems  possess  a  certain 
rounded  totality.  Thus  unity,  plurality,  totality  are  three 
forms  in  terms  of  which  we  conceive  all  our  objective 
world.  Kant  himself  supposes  that  our  ideas  of  the  meas- 
urable quantities  of  the  physical  world  are  due  to  these 
thought  forms.  Or  again,  if  we  conceive,  as  we  always  do, 
a  world  of  changing  objects,  we  conceive  that  all  physical 

19 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
changes  leave  invariant  certain  material  substances 
whose  nature  we  can  only  define  in  terms  of  our  actual 
experience,  but  whose  existence  we  conceive  whether  pres- 
ent experience  enables  us  to  fill  out  the  scheme  or  not.  To 
take  an  instance  from  recent  experience,  if  radium  proves 
to  be  transformed  as  it  changes  into  some  other  material 
phenomenon,  say  helium,  then  we  tend  to  assume  at  once 
that  these  changes  have  occurred  to  something  that  lies 
beneath  the  changes  in  question,  and  that,  being  itself 
neither  mere  radium  nor  mere  helium,  remains  invariant 
through  the  change.  Something  is  invariant,  wherever 
change  occurs — this  presupposition  defines  for  us, 
according  to  Kant,  a  schema,  in  terms  of  which  all 
observed  changes  are  to  be  interpreted.  And  this  schema 
expresses  a  type  of  thinking,  a  category,  characteristic  of 
our  intelligence.  This  is  the  category  of  Substance.  In  a 
similar  fashion  we  conceive  events  as  always  being  in- 
stances of  invariant  rules,  the  laws  of  nature.  What 
these  laws  are,  experience  alone  can  tell  us.  But  that  there 
are  laws,  invariant  from  event  to  event,  and  omnipres- 
ent, this  is  a  principle  in  terms  of  which  all  of  our  con- 
ceptual constructions  are  made,  however  well  or  ill  we 
may  as  yet  have  learned  from  experience  what  the  laws 
of  nature  are.  This  schema,  this  outline  plan  of  things,  in 
terms  of  which  we  build  up  the  whole  world  of  conceptual 
constructions,  is  due  to  a  type  of  thinking  which  Kant 
calls  the  category  of  Causation. 

The  result  of  our  possessing  such  categories  is  that  we 
carry  about  with  us  a  sort  of  outline  plan  of  the  natural 
universe.  We  fill  in  this  scheme  solely  by  means  of  experi- 
ences, and  of  images  derived  from  experience.  But  the 
plan  itself  is  a  priori,  and  is,  for  us,  necessary.  Without 
categories,  no  conceptual  constructions.  Without  a  gen- 

20 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
eral  outline  of  the  form  of  reality,  no  means  of  defining 
tests  for  distinguishing  real  from  purely  fanciful  con- 
structions. Without  conceptual  constructions,  however, 
we  should  possess  no  acknowledgment  or  recognition  of 
past  or  of  future,  no  acceptance  of  the  now  unseen  nat- 
ural phenomena,  no  conspectus  of  any  physical  realm 
whatever — nothing  but  the  dream  of  an  incomprehensi- 
ble present.  It  follows,  thinks  Kantr  that  it  is  the  form  of 
our  own  intelligence  which  determines  the  intelligible 
structure  of  the  whole  natural  world  that  we  acknowledge 
as  real.  So  much  for  the  first  of  the  two  aspects  of  the 
conceptual  constructions  here  in  question. 

The  second  aspect  is  closely  bound  up  with  the  first.  I 
do  not  merely  conceive  of  the  phenomena  that  are  not 
now  visible  to  me ;  I  also  conceive  them  all  as  linked  into 
some  definable  unity  which  connects  them  with  my  pres- 
ent experience.  For  what  is  now  happening  to  me  I  view 
as  merely  an  instance  of  a  process  of  experience  which 
virtually  or  possibly  includes  all  physical  facts.  And  all 
of  the  other  facts  of  experience  which  I  acknowledge,  but 
which  are  now  conceptual  constructions  to  me,  I  view  as 
possible  experiences  of  mine,  and  therefore  as  possessing 
an  unity  which  is  the  correlate  of  the  unity  of  my  own 
self.  I  also  view  these  same  facts  as  possible  experiences 
of  yours  or  of  any  other  human  being ;  for  I  regard  all 
human  experiences  as  belonging  to  a  single  system,  to  a 
single  unity  of  possible  experience.  There  is  then,  says 
Kant,  virtually  but  one  experience.  And  all  physicaljfacts 
are  conceived  as  facts  existent  for  this  .one  jexperience, 
ancTthus  as  mutually  linked.  We  conceive  all  momentary 
observations  of  ours  as  fragmentary  glimpses  of  that  one 
experience.  The  unity  of  the  physical  world  is  therefore 
conceived  by  us  in.  terms  of  the  unity  of  a  sort  of  ideal  or 

21 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
virtual  self,  the  self  of  an  ideal  or  possible  human 
observer  of  whom  we  conceive  that  whatever  fact  we 
acknowledge  to  be  real  in  the  physical  world  is  ipso  facto 
viewed  as  observable  byjthis_self.  This  ideal  or  virtual 
self  is,  for  any  one  of  us,  myself,  my  larger  unity  of 
experience.  When  I  think  of  you  as  experiencing  the  same 
physical  world  that  I  experience,  I  do  so  because  I  then 
conceive  our  experiences  as  being  virtually  the  experi- 
ences of  a  single  self,  that  is,  as  being  subject  to  the  same 
categories,  and  as  united  in  a  common  process  of  knowl- 
edge. Whatever  fact  of  nature  I  conceive  as  real,  I  thus 
conceive  as  a  phenomenon  for  that  virtual  self,  whose  ex- 
periences I  from  moment  to  moment  exemplify,  whose 
categories  I  from  moment  to  moment  employ,  and  whose 
unity  of  possible  experience  is  correlative  with  whatever 
unity  I  ascribe  to  the  natural  world. 

Kant  nowhere  says,  and  certainly  nowhere  intends, 
that  this  self  to  whose  categories  all  natural  facts  con- 
form has  anything  but  a  virtual,  a  conceived,  unity  of 
consciousness.  He  nowhere  means  that  this  self  should  be 
viewed  as  any  absolute,  or  as  any  superhuman  mind  that 
views  all  the  facts  of  nature  at  once.  He  is  speaking  only 
of  human  intelligence,  and  only  of  how  we  men  have  to 
view,  that  is,  to  conceive  and  to  experience  our  facts  of 
nature.  What  he  holds  is  that  those  facts  of  nature  which 
we  conceive,  but  do  not  observe,  have  (1)  to  be  conceived 
by  us  in  accordance  with  our  categories,  or  forms  of 
thought,  and  then  (2)  have  to  be  conceived  by  us  as 
possible  objects  of  our  own  experience.  In  order  thus  to 
be  viewed,  these  now  unseen  facts  of  nature  have  to  be 
conceived  by  us  as  so  related  to  what  we  do  now  experi- 
ence that  this  very  relation  itself  is  also  the  possible 
object  of  our  own  experience.  Thus  all  natural  facts  are 

22 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
conceived  as  present  to  a  single  virtual  unity  of  conscious- 
ness, the  virtual  unity  of  the  consciousness  of  the  self. 
This  self  one  inevitably  conceives  as  common  to  all  those 
men  whose  intelligence  we  accept  as  essentially  a  guide  to 
our  own. 

VI. 

I  suppose  that  one  may  have  listened  to  all  the  preced- 
ing discourse,  and  may  still  be  disposed  to  reply  to  Kant 
somewhat  as  follows :  This  account  seems,  so  far  as  stated, 
to  be  wholly  an  account  of  how  we  men  find  it  convenient 
to  conceive  things.  But  man 's  true  scientific  interest  is  in 
things  as  they  are  and  not  in  his  private  conceptions.  Now 
from  moment  to  moment,  whatever  our  categories  may  be, 
experience  comes  to  us  in  its  own  way,  and  independently 
of  our  will.  And  however  we  may  conceptually  construct 
the  now  unseen  world,  that  world  actually  contains  what- 
ever it  contains,  and  again  independently  of  our  will  or 
of  our  way  of  thinking.  What  a  priori  guarantee  is  there 
then  that  these  our  ways  of  conceiving  things  are  well 
warranted?  Why  might  not  the  genuine  natural  world 
simply  ignore  our  categories  ?  If  it  did  so,  and  experience 
failed  to  confirm  our  ways  of  conceiving  things,  what 
could  we  do  to  enforce  our  conceptional  constructions? 
Present  experience,  in.  any  case,  is  not  a  mere  conceptual 
construction.  Why  might  not  the  unintelligible  happen? 
Why  might  not  experience  break  away  from  the  forms  of 
my  intellect  ?  Why  might  not  chaos  come  at  any  moment  ? 
That  such  chaos  does  not  now  occur,  what  is  that  but 
itself  a  merely  empirical  fact,  neither  a  priori  nor 
necessary  ? 

To  answer  just  such  questions,  so  far  as  the  categories 
were  concerned,  was  the  purpose  of  Kant's  so-called 

23 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
deduction  of  the  categories.  This  deduction  is  an  effort 
to  prove,  not  only  that  we  are  subjectively  forced  to  con- 
ceive all  facts  as  bei.ig  in  accordance  with  the  forms  of 
our  intellect,  but  also  that  we  can  be  sure  that  the  objec- 
tive facts  of  what  we  call  nature  actually  never  will 
transgress  the  limits  which  our  intellect  sets  when  it 
defines  the  foregoing  outline  plan  of  our  world. 

Kant 's  deduction  may  be  summarized  in  our  own  way 
as  follows :  We  men  never  deal  or  can  deal  with  any  facts 
which  are  totally  independent  of  our  nature.  We  never 
deal  with  things  as  they  might  exist  in  and  by  themselves, 
in  case  there  were  nobody  there  to  know  them.  On  the 
contrary,  we  deal  with  phenomena,  with  facts  as  they 
appear  to  us.  It  is  then  not  surprising  that  our  nature  as 
knowing  beings  should  have  a  great  deal  to  do  a  priori 
with  the  way  in  which  what  we  call  facts  should  be  con- 
stituted. Our  physical  world  is,  after  all,  the  world  as  we 
see  it  and  as  we  conceive  it,  and  is  therefore  simply  not 
independent  of  our  nature.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a 
human  world — a  world  that  men  find  and  think  and 
define  and  verify.  What  wonder  then  if  it  actually  con- 
forms to  our  necessary  and  human  point  of  view?  If  it 
did  not,  how  should  we  ever  come  to  know  the  fact  that  it 
did  not  ?  For  such  knowledge  would  be  knowledge,  and  so 
far  would  have  to  conform  to  the  conditions  which  make 
our  knowledge  possible. 

But  these  are  generalities.  Let  us  come  still  closer  to  the 
precise  situation  by  showing  how  experience  from  mo- 
ment to  moment  gets  its  structure.  I  see  just  now  these 
facts  before  me.  I  see  this  room,  these  walls,  these  people. 
But  intelligent  seeing  is  not  mere  acceptance  of  data.  It  is 
a  more  or  less  spontaneous  response  to  things.  It  is  a 
doing  as  well  as  a  viewing;  it  is  intelligent  as  well  as 

24 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
receptive ;  it  is  constructive  as  well  as  submissive.  I  look 
at  things.  That  means :  I  move  my  eyes,  I  turn  my  head, 
I  reconstruct  the  contours  of  the  objects  upon  which  my 
gaze  fixes  itself.  My  observation  is  a  mode  of  living,  a 
fashion  of  behavior,  a  stamping  myself  upon  my  world. 
For  after  all,  I  from  moment  to  moment  see  in  things 
what  I  am  prepared  to  think  into  things.  Experience  is  a 
synthesis  of  contents,  a  weaving  together  of  data,  a  proc- 
ess of  building  up  the  connections  of  things.  And  in  all 
this  active  process  of  experience,  am  I  not  at  every  instant 
expressing  myself  as  well  as  reflecting  any  foreign  nature 
of  things? 

Well,  even  when  I  thus  actively  experience  the  pres- 
ence of  what  is  independent  of  my  will,  I  still  of  course 
use,  from  moment  to  moment,  my  categories.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  whatever  I  actually  observe  and  make 
the  topic  of  assertions  has  to  conform  to  my  essen- 
tial modes  of  observation  and  of  judgment,  and  that 
whatever  I  am  to  understand  must  be,  in  its  outline 
structure,  such  as  to  lend  itself  to  the  demands  of  my 
understanding.  So  far,  a  deduction  of  the  applicability 
of  my  categories  to  whatever  facts  are  to  come  under  my 
notice,  appears  identical  with  the  observation  that  facts 
cannot  at  any  moment  be  forced  upon  me  in  such  wise  as 
to  become  intelligible  to  me  at  all,  without  the  active 
cooperation  of  my  own  intelligence.  So,  therefore,  what- 
ever I  am  at  present  to  understand  must  always  be  such 
as  conforms  to  the  type  of  my  understanding.  If  quantity 
and  quality,  if  unity  and  plurality,  if  the  sharp  outlines 
and  clear  limitations  of  things,  if  conceived  permanence 
of  objects,  and  if  conformity  to  some  sort  of  laws  regard- 
ing the  sequence  of  things — if  all  these  are  ideas  in  terms 
of  which  I  necessarily  must  interpret  the  facts  of  sense 

25 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
which  are  now  before  me,  unless  I  am  to  fail  intelligently 
to  grasp  these  facts  at  all,  then  indeed  it  seems  fair 
enough  to  say  that  from  moment  to  moment  only  the 
relatively  coherent  experience  is  fitted  to  survive  for  my 
attention,  as  any  experience  of  facts  at  all.  Attention 
then  always  secures  a  sort  of  survival  of  the  fittest 
amongst  my  experiences.  I  can  intelligently  note  only 
what  is  fit  to  be  known,  the  more  or  less  orderly  and  not 
the  merely  chaotic. 

Now  all  this  indeed  seems  to  throw  light  upon  the  pres- 
ent conditions  to  which  my  experience  must  conform  if  I 
am  just  now  to  view  that  experience  as  in  any  way  for  me 
intelligible  and  significant.  But,  as  you  may  still  insist, 
does  this  throw  any  light  upon  what  sorts  of  facts  and 
laws  the  whole  wide  range  of  infinite  nature  must  con- 
tain ?  The  distant  stars,  the  interior  of  the  earth,  the  con- 
stitution of  matter,  the  evolution  of  species — do  I  thus 
know  anything  a  priori  about  even  the  outline  structure 
of  these  so  distant  and  manifold  facts?  The  nature  of 
things  is  whatever  it  is.  I  did  not  make  the  world. 
"Where  wast  thou  when  I  laid  the  foundations  of 
things?"  So  the  Lord  of  the  whirlwind  might  say  to 
me  as  to  Job.  What  power  have  my  categories  over  such  a 
Lord,  or  over  whatever  power  it  is  to  which  the  natural 
world  is  due  ? 

Kant  replies,  in  substance,  by  insisting  that  when  you 
talk  of  nature  and  of  the  great  whole  of  things  you  must 
mean  something  by  what  you  talk  about.  If  you  speak  of 
a  natural  fact,  you  cannot  speak  of  things  as  they  would 
be  in  case  nobody  knew  them,  or  as  they  are  in  case  no- 
body knows  them.  You  must  speak  either  of  what  you 
now  observe  or  else  of  what  you  conceive  as  observable 
by  you.  Facts  of  any  other  sorts  than  these  are  simply  in- 

26 


TTAT 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
definable  by  you  and  are  unknowable.  Or  again,  you  must 
so  think  of  facts  as  to  define  them  with  reference  to  the 
conditions  of  your  possible  experience.  Else  are  they  no 
facts  for  you  at  all.  Your  world,  in  other  words,  consists 
either  of  what  you  see  or  of  what  you  think.  And  what 
you  think,  if  your  thought  has  any  sense  at  all,  is  con- 
ceived in  terms  of  some  experience  that,  as  you  suppose, 
you  might  have.  Define,  however,  any  of  your  possible  ex- 
periences. Where  must  you  inevitably  place  it,  in  order 
to  give  any  meaning  to  your  definition?  Kant  answers, 
"In  the  same  totality  of  conceived  experience  as  that  in 
which  you  place  the  very  fact  which  you  now  see. ' '  For 
all  your  possible  experience  has  to  be  conceived  by 
you  as  linked  by  definable  ties  to  your  present  experience. 
Else  you  do  not  conceive  such  possible  experience  as 
yours  at  all.  And  these  links  have  to  be  so  conceived  by 
you  that  you  can  at  least  regard  yourself  as  virtually 
authorized,  by  your  relation  to  the  world,  to  take  all  the 
facts  whose  reality  you  can  acknowledge  into  the  single 
unity  of  one  view.  You  can  then  at  least  conceive  your- 
self as  saying  to  all  facts,  ''Yes,  these  are  facts,  for  I, 
the  one  self,  experience  them."  Unless  you  at  least  con- 
ceive such  an  unity  of  view  as  possible,  you  do  not  define 
the  facts  of  your  world  as,  for  you,  genuine  facts  at  all. 
Only  of  such  phenomena  can  you  speak.  With  things  in 
themselves  you  have,  in  your  knowledge,  nothing  what- 
ever to  do. 

Hence,  as  Kant  insists,  in  acknowledging  facts  as  real, 
you  have  to  view  such  facts  as  determined  in  their  nature 
by  the  very  conditions  which  make  the  unity  of  your  pres- 
ent experience  possible.  Whatever  object  is  now  before 
you,  and  is  observed  and  noted  by  you,  plainly  has  a 
structure  whose  outlines  your  own  nature  as  an  intelli- 

27 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
gent  user  of  your  categories  determines.  And,  even  so, 
whatever  object  is  not  now  before  you,  it  is  still  conceived 
as  a  real  or  as  a  possible  fact  of  nature,  is  conceived  as 
virtually  yours  to  observe,  to  define  and  report,  to  con- 
nect with  the  present  and  with  all  other  facts  into  a  sin- 
gle united  whole  of  experiences.  Nature  is  real  for  you 
in  so  far  as  you  can  conceive  that  were  it  not  for  your 
empirical  limitations  of  consciousness  you  could  ob- 
serve all  its  facts  at  one  glance.  Hence,  all  natural  facts, 
whatever  they  are,  must  be  viewed  by  you  as  if  an  intel- 
ligence, virtually  identical  with  your  own,  determined, 
not  indeed  their  empirical  details,  but  their  general  out- 
lines in  conformity  with  the  laws  of  your  intelligence, 
constructed  them  as  if  to  exemplify  your  categories,  drew 
them,  so  to  speak,  as  a  geometer  draws  lines,  put  into 
them  that  intelligible  structure  which  you  now  think 
into  present  facts.  As  we  have  already  pointed  out,  this 
virtual  intelligence,  to  whose  categories  whatever  facts 
you  are  to  regard  as  real  must  conform,  is  indeed  not, 
for  Kant,  any  concrete  or  absolute  or  divine  intelligence 
at  all,  but  is  simply  that  presupposed  virtual  unity  of 
consciousness  in  conformity  with  whose  categories  you 
have  to  think  facts  in  order  to  conceive  them  real  at  all. 
For  if  what  I  now  note  has  to  conform  to  the  laws  of  my 
intelligence  in  order  to  become  notable,  what  I  conceive 
as  real  has  still  to  be  conceived  as  possibly  observable, 
not  only  in  its  own  structure  but  in  those  relations 
which  bind  it,  with  all  other  real  facts,  into  the  unity  of 
a  single  conceivable  and  possible  observation. 

Let  us  briefly  sum  up  this  whole  lengthy  survey.  It  is 
indeed  true,  according  to  Kant,  that  our  knowledge  is 
limited  to  facts  of  experience.  But  it  is  also  true  that  we 
know  a  priori,  and  in  outline,  what  the  structure  of  these 

28 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
facts  must  be.  In  so  far  as  this  structure  is  simply  one  of 
time  and  space  we  can  define  it  a  priori  by  means  of  a 
mathematical  science  of  those  forms  of  all  our  observa- 
tion which  are  called  time  and  space.  Such  a  science  is 
not  empirical,  and  yet  is  possible  only  because  it 
predetermines  what  the  mathematical  forms  of  all  empir- 
ical objects  must  be.  Similarly,  there  is  a  further  science 
a  priori  of  the  formal  outline  structure  to  which  all  phys- 
ical objects  and  relations  and  laws  of  objects  must  con- 
form. This  science  of  the  very  conditions  which  every 
definable  object  of  common  sense  and  of  our  natural 
science  must  illustrate,  tells  us  in  advance,  not  what  facts 
we  shall  find,  but  what  sort  of  unity  all  experience  must 
possess  in  order  to  be  conceived  as  our  possible  experi- 
ence in  any  sense  whatever.  These  conditions  of  the 
unity  of  possible  experience  are  our  categories,  our  ways 
of  conceiving  and  of  describing  things.  We  conceive  them 
as  the  laws  in  accordance  with  which  a  certain  conceived 
self,  identical  in  its  intelligent  nature  with  our  own 
intellect,  virtually  constructs  for  us  all  natural  facts  out 
of  the  raw  material  which  sense  from  moment  to  moment 
presents.  This  virtual  self,  and  its  understanding,  we 
must  conceive  as  the  source  of  the  types  to  which  all 
natural  laws  and  facts  must  conform. 

Such,  in  summary,  is  Kant's  deduction  of  the  cate- 
gories, his  attempted  proof  that  all  natural  facts  must 
conform  a  priori  to  the  conditions  which  our  intelligence 
determines.  Essential  features  of  his  attempted  proof  are 
(1)  the  assertion  that  all  natural  facts  are  phenomena, 
not  things  as  they  would  or  might  be  in  case  nobody  knew 
them;  and  (2)  his  view  that  all  phenomena,  as  possible 
objects  of  experience,  must  conform  to  the  laws  of  the 
possible  unity  of „  consciousness  of  a  single  self  whose 

29 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
complete  experience  we  never  attain  but  are  always  seek- 
ing, and  whose  nature  we  conceive  as  virtually  identical 
with  the  very  intelligence  that  from  moment  to  moment 
gives  order  to  our  passing  experience. 


30 


LECTURE  II. 

THE   MODIFICATION   OF   KANT'S 
CONCEPTION    OF    THE    SELF. 

I  POINTED  out  in  beginning  the  last  lecture  that 
the  present  course  can  undertake  no  connected  his- 
tory of  the  idealistic  movement,  but  is  limited  to  a 
sketch  of  some  of  its  principal  conceptions  and  to  illus- 
trations of  its  manner  of  thinking.  You  will  therefore 
not  demand  of  me  any  detailed  account  of  the  steps  that 
led  from  the  first  philosophical  discussions  which  took 
place  after  Kant  published  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason 
to  the  time  when  the  post-Kantian  idealistic  movement 
was  in  full  swing.  In  our  first  lecture  I  gave  an  outline 
of  the  main  thoughts  of  Kant's  deduction  of  the  cate- 
gories. I  asserted  that  out  of  these  thoughts  the  principal 
considerations  which  the  later  idealism  emphasized  may 
be  said  to  have  developed.  My  present  task  is  to  indicate, 
in  the  most  general  way,  how  this  development  took 
place.  But  I  shall  not  attempt  to  portray  the  annals  of 
philosophical  thought  in  the  closing  years  of  the  eight- 
eenth century. 

I. 

Kant's  deduction  of  the  categories,  as  we  saw,  made 
prominent  what  we  may  now  restate  as  four  distinct  but 
closely  related  thoughts.  The  first  of  these  has  become  a 
commonplace  of  all  modern  philosophy.  It  is  the  thought 
that  we  do  not  knpw  things  as  they  are  or  as  they  might 

31 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

beii  themselves,  that  is,  apart  from  knowledge,  but  we 
know  only  phenomena,  that  is,  things  as  they  appear  to 
us.  In  stating  this  thought,  Kant  made  especially  promi- 
nent one  aspect  of  it,  namely  the  view  that  all  facts  which 
can  be  known  to  us  are  facts  determined  in  their  general 
and  necessary  types  by  whatever  mental  conditions  make 
knowledge  possible  for  us.  We  can  never  know  what  the 
facts  would  be  apart  from  the  occurrence  of  knowledge 
itself ;  we  can  only  know  facts  as  the  process  of  knowledge 
not  only  colors  but  actually  defines  and  determines  their 
appearance.  The  mind  sees  itself  in  all  it  sees.  There  is 
no  way  of  telling  what  the  world  would  be  were  there 
no  intelligence  to  observe  it.  The  world  that  we  know 
is  the  world  that  our  intelligence  observes;  and  the 
nature  of  the  intelligence  is,  therefore,  an  essential  factor 
in  the  constitution  of  phenomena. 

The  second  thought  which  Kant's  deduction  makes 
prominent  is  the  thesis  that  we  can  know,  not  only  in  gen- 
eral but  in  detail,  through  reflection,  just  what  these 
necessary  and  universal  conditions  are  upon  which  our 
knowledge  itself  depends.  For  these  conditions  are  no 
mystery,  such  as  would  be  the  things  in  themselves,  but 
are  due  to  our  own  intelligence,  whose  workings  we  have 
a  right  to  know.  These  conditions,  in  fact,  constitute  what 
Kant  calls  the  form  of  our  known  world.  They  are  time, 
space,  and  the  categories  of  our  understanding.  These 
as  conditions  of  our  knowledge  predetermine  the  outline 
structure  of  our  known  universe.  You  do  not  know 
what  physical  things  there  are  on  the  other  side  of  the 
moon.  But  you  are  sure  that  there  is  space  there  and 
that  space  has  in  the  lunar  regions  the  same  geometrical 
characters  as  the  space  in  this  room.  You  do  not  know 
precisely  what  events  occurred  in  prehistoric  times.  But 

32 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
you  are  confident  that  time  itself  had  then  the  same 
formal  characters  as  now.  The  geometrical  and  the  tem- 
poral outlines  of  all  parts  of  your  world  is,  thus,  prede- 
termined by  the  form  of  your  consciousness  of  time  and 
of  space.  Furthermore,  in  Kant's  opinion,  you  define,  in 
certain  outline  schemes,  that  structure  of  the  world,  as  a 
system  of  units  and  of  complexes,  of  quantities  and  of 
qualities,  of  substances  and  of  laws — that  structure 
which,  according  to  him,  the  categories  of  your  intellect 
predetermine.  You  do  so  although  you  cannot  prede- 
termine how  this  outline  structure  is  to  be  filled  out,  but 
must  leave  to  experience  to  show  what  units,  what  com- 
plexes, what  quantities  and  qualities,  what  substances 
and  laws,  nature  is  to  present  to  you.  Space,  time,  and 
the  categories,  are  thus,  according  to  Kant,  the  a  priori 
aspects  of  knowledge.  This  does  not  mean  that  they  are 
innate  ideas,  such  as  Locke  assailed,  and  such  as  should 
belong  to  the  psychological  furniture  of  the  mind  at 
birth.  What  Kant  means  is  simply  that  space,  time,  and 
the  categories  are  the  forms  logically  characteristic  of 
our  intelligence  whenever  and  however  it  develops,  so 
that  if  we  did  not  interpret  facts  in  terms  of  these  forms, 
we  should  simply  have  no  human  intelligence  whatever, 
but  should  be  beings  of  some  other  type,  whose  states  of 
mind,  whatever  else  they  then  might  be,  would  at  least 
not  be  human  thoughts.  When  Kant  calls  these  forms  of 
our  intelligence  a  priori  forms,  he  means  simply  that 
every  act  of  our  mature  intelligence  must  make  use  of 
these  forms  in  defining  the  outline  sketch  or  scheme  of 
that  world  in  which  we  find  all  our  facts.  His  view  is 
that  a  fact  is  a  fact  for  us  only  in  case  it  can  take 
its  place  somewhere  in  such  a  scheme  as  our  intelligence 
outlines  a  priori. 

33 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

The  third  thought  which  Kant's  deduction  emphasizes 
is  the  thought  that  these  a  priori  forms  are  of  no  use  to  us 
whatever  except  in  so  far  as  we  employ  the  data  of  experi- 
ence to  fill  out  the  forms.  My  outline  scheme  of  my  world 
is  indeed  indispensable  to  me ;  and  the  word  a  priori  in 
so  far  means  for  Kant  simply  the  same  as  indispensable. 
But  this  outline  is  meaningless  unless  it  gets  a  filling. 
The  form  is  vain  without  the  matter.  And  the  form  can- 
not furnish  its  own  matter,  cannot  fill  out  its  own  out- 
lines. It  is  my  experience  which  gives  me  the  matter.  My 
forms  never  tell  me  of  themselves  the  material  facts  that 
the  senses  are  to  show.  Thus,  for  example,  every  physical 
phenomenon  must  be  in  space,  and  so  must  conform  to 
the  laws  of  geometry.  That  is,  for  Kant,  an  a  priori  truth. 
But  geometry  cannot  tell  me  anything  about  what  physi- 
cal facts  are  in  space.  That  is  to  be  learned  only  by 
experience.  Kant's  principle  then  is  that  the  forms  of  the 
intelligence  are  nothing  but  the  formal  conditions  of  our 
possible  experience.  And  that  again  is  precisely  why  they 
tell  us  nothing  about  any  truth  regarding  a  world  beyond 
experience.  Our  knowledge  is  not  enlarged  by  the  a  priori 
forms  beyond  the  range  of  experience.  We  know  through 
them  only  the  conditions  which  are  indispensable  in  case 
experience  is  to  be  obtained,  held  fast,  described,  and 
rendered  intelligible. 

The  fourth  characteristic  thought  in  the  deduction  is 
the  thought  that  we  conceive  all  our  experience  as  unified, 
as  connected,  as  interrelated,  in  so  far  as  we  view  the 
whole  realm  of  knowable  facts  as  the  experience  of  one 
virtual  self  whose  time  and  space  forms,  whose  cate- 
gories, whose  data  of  knowledge,  whose  possible  experi- 
ences, form  the  topic  with  which  all  our  sciences  are 
busied.  This  self  we  view  as  one,  although  we  can  never 

34 


K> 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
find  out  the  ultimate  basis  of  its  unity  or  its  deeper 
nature.  We  attribute  intelligence  to  other  men  only  by 
viewing  their  selves  as,  for  purposes  of  mutual  compre- 
hension, one,  in  intelligent  selfhood,  with  our  own  self. 
The  knowable  world  is  the  realm  of  the  possible  experi- 
ence of  this  virtual  self  to  whose  one  experience  we  inev- 
itably refer  any  natural  fact.  This  one  self  is  indeed,  for 
Kant,  as  we  saw,  not  a  knowable  metaphysical  entity,  but 
merely  a  formal  presupposition  of  the  theory  of  knowl- 
edge. To  say,  "This  is  a  fact  in  the  world,"  is  to  say, 
"This  I  view  as,  under  definite  conditions,  a  possible 
experience  of  mine. ' '  To  say,  ' '  Other  men  know  the  same 
physical  facts  that  I  know,"  is  to  say,  "I  accept  other 
men 's  experience  as  virtually  in  the  same  unity  of  experi- 
ence in  which  I  myself  am."  To  say,  "Facts  are  subject 
to  the  forms  of  intelligence,  to  the  categories,  to  time,  to 
space,"  is  to  say,  "These  forms  are  the  forms  of  the 
experience  of  the  self.  All  experiences  are  parts  of  this 
conceived  single  experience.  These  forms  are  the  forms 
of  the  intelligence  of  the  self."  » 

This  is  Kant's  conception  of  the  nature  and  the  con- 
ditions of  knowledge. 

II. 

Now  it  is  easy  to  see  that  such  a  view  is  in  somewhat 
unstable  equilibrium.  It  is  a  marvelous  synthesis  of 
motives  which  most  men  find  very  conflicting.  I  have 
tried,  in  my  brief  exposition,  to  be  as  just  to  these  motives 
as  the  case  permits.  But  my  very  statement  must  arouse 
a  feeling  to  which  Kant's  contemporaries  gave  frequent 
expression.  This  feeling  is  essentially  this,  that  in  order 
to  get  into  the  realm  of  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge — in 
order  to  view  facts  and  to  define  truth  as  he  did — you 
have  to  admit  conceptions  which,  in  their  turn,  seem  to 

35 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
render  it  impossible  to  remain  permanently  in  that  realm 
when  once  you  have  got  in.  Kant  had  a  very  singular 
power  of  holding  his  judgment  suspended  regarding  mat- 
ters that  almost  any  disciple  of  Kant  is  at  once  tempted  to 
decide,  and  to  decide  in  a  way  that  leads  to  a  modification 
of  the  Kantian  doctrines.  Kant  was  curiously  able  to 
regard  as  unanswerable  certain  questions  which  almost 
any  man  who  even  temporarily  assumes  a  Kantian  posi- 
tion insists  upon  asking,  and  is  almost  certain  to  attempt 
an  answer.  You  may  or  you  may  not  in  the  end  come  to 
agree  with  Kant.  In  any  case  it  is  easy  to  understand  the 
temptations  by  which  his  disciples  and  his  critics  were 
moved  when  they  proceeded  to  modify  what  they  had 
learned  from  him  as  soon  as  they  had  learned  it.  Let  us 
consider  a  little  some  of  these  elements  of  instability 
which  a  closer  consideration  shows  to  exist  in  the  Kantian 
doctrine. 

The  first  point  which  here  meets  our  notice  is  the 
famous  problem  regarding  the  "things  in  themselves." 

We  know,  .said  Kant,  only  phenomena,  only  things  as 
they  appear  to  beings  whose  unity  of  experience,  whose 
forms  of  intelligence,  are  ours.  We  do  not  know  things  as 
they  are  when  nobody,  or  nobody  like  ourselves,  knows 
them.  One  may  at  once  reply  to  Kant,  "What  do  you 
mean,  then,  by  your  things  in  themselves,  which  are,  but 
are  unknowable  ?  Do  you  mean  merely  to  suggest  the  bare 
possibility,  the  purely  abstract  hypothesis,  that,  apart 
from  all  human  knowledge,  there  might  be  an  object  er  a 
world  of  objects,  that  nobody  such  as  we  mortals  are 
knew  or  could  know  ?  Do  you  merely  mean  to  say  that  if 
there  be,  or  if  there  were,  any  such  things  in  themselves, 
we,  who  know  only  in  our  own  way,  and  according  to 
our  own  lights,  could  not  find  such  facts  amongst  our 

36 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
phenomena  ?  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  do  you  mean  directly 
to  assert  that  there  are  things  in  themselves — a  world  of 
indubitable  £acts  existent  apart  from  all  human  knowl- 
edge, a  supersensuous  realm,  a  beyond — and  that  we 
mortals  have  no  access  to  that  realm,  being  confined  to 
mere  phenomena." 

Kant  unquestionably  meant  to  hold  the  second  of  these 
two  views.  To  his  mind  there  was  never  a  doubt  that, 
quite  apart  from  human  knowledge,  there  is  an  abso- 
lutely real  world  to  which  we  can  apply  the  name  "the 
world  of  things  in  themselves."  To  this  world,  in  fact, 
even  we  ourselves  belong,  according  to  Kant,  in  so  far  as 
our  own  selves  have  some  basis,  to  us  at  present  unknow- 
able, some  root  grounded  in  the  nature  oi;  things  outside 
of  our  own  present  conscious  knowledge,  but  real  never- 
theless in  a  sense  in  which  no  phenomenon,  mental  or 
physical,  is  ever  real.  Even  our  own  personal  conscious- 
ness never  shows  us  what  we  ourselves  are.  Yet  that  we 
are  is  indubitable.  Our  true  self  is  thus  not  our  conscious 
self.  Beneath  the  phenomena  of  our  inner  life,  beneath 
our  feelings,  our  thoughts,  our  phenomenal  character,  our 
apparent  motives,  there  is  the  real  man,  the  self  of  the 
self,  the  heart  of  hearts  within  us,  or  rather,  as  Kant 
would  prefer  to  say,  the  genuine  will  that  in  each  one  of 
us  is  only  phenomenally  indicated  by  what  he  seems  to  be 
doing  in  the  phenomenal  world.  Kant  held  this  view,  in 
case  of  the  self  of  each  one  of  us,  for  reasons  which  he 
could  not  articulate  in  purely  theoretical  terms,  but 
which  his  ethical  philosophy,  developed  in  his  later  work 
called  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,  made  especially 
prominent.  Observe  the  phenomena  of  your  inner  life. 
They  come  and  go  like  other  matters  of  experience.  Look- 
ing at  them  theoretically,  you  can  define  their  form 

37 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
a  priori,  somewhat  as  you  can  define  the  outline  form  of 
other  phenomena.  Unlike  other  phenomena,  those  of  the 
mind  are  viewed  by  you  as  taking  place  simply  in  time, 
and  not,  like  material  phenomena,  as  also  occupying 
space.  But  you  view  these  mental  phenomena  as  facts 
subject  to  the  types  of  law  which  your  categories  deter- 
mine. If  you  study  psychology,  you  try  to  reduce  the 
mental  phenomena  to  an  intelligible  system  of  facts  of 
experience,  just  as  you  treat  other  phenomena.  In  this 
way  you  learn,  not  what  you  really  are,  but  how  you 
seem  to  yourself  to  be.  But  when  you  act,  when  you 
choose  something,  you  nevertheless  have  a  certain  prac- 
tical faith  which  you  express  by  saying,  "I  did  this 
deed;  nobody  else  did  it.  I  am  the  true  source  of  this 
deed,  which  originated  nowhere  else."  This  faith  is, 
according  to  Kant,  incapable  of  any  psychological  verifi- 
cation by  any  study  of  mental  phenomena.  If  you  observe 
your  inner  states,  you  can  only  note  a  certain  sequence  of 
experiences,  of  feelings,  of  interests,  of  images,  and  a 
certain  relation  between  these  states  and  the  outer  phe- 
nomena, the  movements  of  your  body.  You  cannot  see 
where  your  mental  states  come  from.  As  psychologist  you 
are  interested  merely  in  attempting  to  connect  these 
states  of  yours  with  other  phenomena,  according  to  laws 
which  exemplify  the  categories  of  your  understanding. 
But  no  such  discovery  of  how  your  mental  states  are 
psychologically  caused  is  ever  just  to  the  demand  of  what 
Kant  calls  your  practical  reason.  For  the  practical  reason 
says,  ' '  I  am  the  author  of  my  own  deeds. ' '  Now,  in  your 
inner  life,  you  never  observe  this  author  of  your  deeds. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  realm  of  mental  phenomena  that 
appears,  or  that  can  appear  to  be  the  first  author,  the 
actual  doer,  or  originator  of  anything  whatever.  The 

38 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
inner  life  shows  you  only  states  of  mind  which  your 
understanding  views  as  the  result  of  various  antecedent 
phenomenal  causes ;  and  this  chain  of  antecedents  you  are 
obliged  to  extend  backwards  indefinitely,  without  ever 
being  able  to  conceive  its  temporal  or  phenomenal  origin. 
None  the  less,  the  practical  reason,  in  passing  moral  judg- 
ments, inevitably  says,  ' '  I  am,  for  I  ought  to  be,  the  ori- 
gin, the  source  of  my  own  deeds."  And  the  faith  thus 
asserted  is,  for  Kant,  rationally  as  unconquerable  as  it  is, 
for  us,  unverifiable.  This  is  the  faith  which  Kant  defines, 
in  his  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,  as  the  postulate  of 
the  freedom  of  the  will. 

Since  the  phenomenal  or  empirical  self  of  the  inner 
life,  the  "me,"  is  thus  viewed  by  our  understanding  as 
an  effect  of  conditions,  never  as  an  originator  of  any- 
thing, while  the  moral  consciousness  inevitably,  and,  as 
Kant  holds,  rightly,  believes  that  I  am  in  very  truth  the 
initiator  of  my  deeds,  it  follows,  according  to  Kant,  that 
the  true  self  is  no  phenomenon  of  the  inner  life,  is  not 
presented  to  our  observant  consciousness,  but  has  a  re- 
ality of  which  we  are  not  now  conscious  at  all,  a  char- 
acter which  no  phenomenal  heredity  and  no  gradual 
formation  of  observable  habits  can  determine,  a  nature 
which  no  introspection  reveals.  This  true  self  is  no  fact 
in  space  or  in  time.  It  is  subject  to  none  of  the  categories 
of  our' understanding.  It  is  to  us  unknowable,  but  indu- 
bitable— undiscoverable  in  inner  experience,  but  re- 
sponsible for  all  our  activity.  It  is  our  ethical  postulate, 
but  not  our  verifiable  datum.  It  is  not  the  psychological 
'  'me,  "but  the  ethical  "I." 

To  sum  up:  This  doctrine,  which  Kant  develops  at 
length  in  his  ethics,  has  an  essentially  practical  basis. 
We  cannot  consciously  observe  our  own  real  nature.  But 

39 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
we  act  as  if  we  had  one,  for  which  we  are  ethically  re- 
sponsible. And  we  ought  so  to  act.  In  his  ethics  Kant  is 
guided  by  what,  in  his  opinion,  is  a  perfectly  rational 
faith  that  each  of  us  possesses,  or  rather  is,  a  true  ego, 
now  out  of  our  own  range  of  observation,  but  absolutely 
real;  the  phenomena  of  the  inner  life  are  only  the 
shadow,  so  to  speak,  of  this  true  ego,  the  mere  hint  that 
it  gives  to  the  understanding  of  how  it  displays  and 
hides  itself. 

Now  just  as  Kant  thus  feels  sure  of  a  true  ego,  which 
is  no  phenomenon  of  consciousness,  but  which  is  the  true 
author  of  our  deeds,  the  very  life  of  our  will,  he  likewise 
finds  indubitable,  although  never  phenomenally  veri- 
fiable, the  view  that  behind  all  external  phenomena 
there  are  genuine  things  in  themselves,  as  unknown  to 
our  intellect  as  they  are  impenetrable  to  our  senses.  Yet 
without  these  things  in  themselves,  as  Kant  holds,  our 
senses  would  have  no  contents  to  present  to  our  thought, 
and  our  thought  no  phenomena  to  conceive  in  accordance 
with  the  categories  of  the  understanding.  The  things  in 
themselves  being  other  than  the  true  ego  somehow  af- 
fect our  true  ego.  The  result  is  first  that  our  senses  are 
impressed  by  certain  data,  and  then  that  the  understand- 
ing is  aroused  to  apply  its  forms  to  the  intelligent  con- 
ception of  these  data.  As  a  consequence,  we  cone  to  see 
the  phenomena  before  us  and  to  view  physical  objects 
as  real.  The  physical  objects  are  indeed  only  phenomena. 
The  phenomena  are  the  show  of  an  otherwise  unknowa- 
ble yet  absolutely  real  world. 

So  far  Kant's  view  of  the  " things  in  themselves," — a 
doctrine  partly  inarticulate  and  partly  ethical,  at  once 
the  deepest  and  the  least  satisfactory  of  his  personal  pre- 
suppositions in  philosophy. 

40 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 

III. 

Kant's  followers  and  critics  have  nearly  always  found 
this  view,  as  I  said  before,  unstable.  It  is  one  thing  to 
say :  We  know  things  as  they  appear  to  us.  It  is  another 
thing  to  say:  We  know  that  there  are  absolutely  real 
things  which  nevertheless  do  not  appear  to  us,  and  which 
never  can  appear  to  us.  The  inevitable  question  arises: 
How  are  we  able  to  know  so  much,  and  yet  so  little  about 
these  things  in  themselves  ?  So  much ;  for  although  they 
never  appear  in  our  experience,  and  although  we  never 
verify  their  presence,  as  we  verify  phenomenal  facts,  we 
yet  somehow  know  that  they  are.  So  little ;  for  although 
we  thus  know  that  they  are,  we  can  never,  by  any  pos- 
sibility, learn  what  they  are,  so  long  as  we  are  in  this 
present  form  of  life,  and  are  possessed  of  any  human 
type  of  knowledge  whatever. 

This  question,  once  raised,  refuses  to  be  answered 
without  a  revision  of  the  Kantian  concept  of  the  things 
in  themselves.  The  simplest  revision  would  seem  to  be 
one  which  had  some  part  in  forming  the  views  of  the 
post-Kantian  idealists.  This  simplest  revision  would  in- 
volve a  mere  dropping  of  this  concept,  as  a  paradoxical 
one,  incapable  of  definite  articulation.  If  knowledge  is  of 
phenomena,  why  talk  of  any  world  but  the  world  of  phe- 
nomena? If  all  the  sciences  are  concerned  simply  with 
the  laws  of  phenomena,  why  pretend  to  acknowledge  the 
existence  of  things  in  themselves,  beyond  all  possible 
knowledge?  To  be  sure,  both  science  and  common  sense 
intend  to  deal  with  a  real  world  and  not  with  a  world  of 
fantasies  or  of  merely  present  mental  states.  But  then 
Kant's  world  of  phenomena  is  not  an  unreal  world,  nor 
is  it  a  world  merely  of  present  sense  perception.  It  is  a 
world  of  orderly  possibilities  of  experience.  Its  facts  and 

41 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
laws  are  valid  for  every  man,  and  are  capable  of  being 
tested  in  definite  ways  by  processes  which,  involve  turn- 
ing possible  experiences  into  actually  present  experi- 
ences. A  visible  fixed  star  is  indeed  a  phenomenon.  It  is 
not  on  that  account  something  which,  for  Kant,  is  subjec- 
tive. It  is  an  objective  phenomenon,  for  all  astronomers 
can  observe  it,  and  can  define  its  apparent  place  by  the 
same  astronomical  coordinates  and  can  verify  the  defi- 
nition. We  eat  and  drink,  we  buy  and  sell,  we  wear  and 
we  store  up  in  our  houses,  not  things  in  themselves,  but 
phenomena.  Yet  Kant  holds,  like  any  common  sense  man, 
that  all  these  phenomena  are  objective,  and  are  in  no 
wise  phantasms.  What  makes  them  objective  is  that  they 
are  subject  to  definite  empirical  laws.  Kant  has  shown, 
as  he  thinks,  why  these  laws  hold  for  phenomena.  His 
deduction  of  the  categories  was  concerned  with  that 
problem.  In  any  case,  whether  you  accept  Kant's  deduc- 
tion or  not,  the  phenomena  are  the  facts  about  our  world 
which  alone  interest  our  science.  Hence  one  may  well  ask 
what  good  the  things  in  themselves  are  to  anybody,  since 
one  can  neither  investigate,  nor  possess,  nor  consume, 
nor  even  define  them. 

Nevertheless  the  case  of  the  true  self,  the  free  agent, 
of  Kant  's  ethical  doctrine,  still  gives  us  a  little  pause  as 
we  try  to  make  up  our  minds  about  the  fate  of  the  things 
in  themselves.  Whether  you  accept  Kant  's  view  of  the  self 
or  not,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  practical  teaching 
concerning  that  self  which  I  am  to  view  as  the  author  of 
my  own  deeds  has  its  own  special  interest.  The  fact  that 
no  psychological  analysis  ever  discovers  the  first  origin 
of  any  mental  phenomenon  whatever,  while  I  yet  have  a 
deep  and  morally  significant  tendency  to  ascribe  to  my- 
self an  originative  character  as  the  source  of  my  own 

42 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
deeds — all  this,  I  say,  furnishes  a  motive  for  speaking  of 
the  true  self  as  no  phenomenon,  and  as  at  once  beyond 
and  beneath  all  my  present  consciousness.  This  motive 
the  principal  post-Kantian  idealists,  as  we  shall  soon  see, 
fully  appreciated.  It  suggests  rather  a  modification  than 
a  simple  dropping  of  the  conception  of  things  in  them- 
selves. What  such  a  modification  might  involve  is  further 
suggested  by  an  aspect  of  phenomena  which  both  Kant 
and  common  sense  recognize,  and  which  was  pointed  out 
in  our  previous  lecture  when  we  were  sketching  Kant's 
deduction. 

We  deal  with  the  phenomenal  world,  and  the  laws 
of  our  own  intelligence  determine  the  outline  struc- 
ture which  its  facts  must  possess  in  case  they  are  to  take 
any  place  at  all  in  our  sciences  or  in  our  lives.  But  as 
we  saw,  this  outline  structure  is  not  its  own  filling.  The 
form  of  things,  according  to  Kant,  we  know  a  priori,  but 
the  form  does  not,  to  our  view,  determine  the  matter.  In 
other  words,  we  are  conscious  of  phenomena;  and,  ac- 
cording to  Kant,  we  can  become  conscious  a  priori  of  the 
types  of  law  which  phenomena  must  exemplify.  We  are 
not  conscious  of  the  source  of  our  experience.  We  are 
not  conscious  of  why  just  these  facts  must  be  presented 
to  our  senses.  We  have  passively  to  await  the  verdict  of 
experience  regarding  what  data  are  to  fill  out  our  intel- 
ligent outline  plan  of  things. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  natural  to  say  that  since  phe- 
nomena, although,  in  Kant's  view,  objective,  are  still 
facts  for  a  possible  human  consciousness,  while  human 
consciousness  is  an  expression  of  the  self,  therefore  the 
source  of  our  experience  may  lie  hidden  in  that  very 
nature  of  the  real  self  which  Kant,  in  his  ethics,  postu- 
lates as  the  source  of  our  deeds.  The  true  self  is  hidden 

43 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
from  us.  It  is  no  phenomenon.  Yet  it  is  that  which  actu- 
ally does  our  deeds.  May  it  not  in  some  way  originate 
our  experience  also?  May  not  its  hidden  nature  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  matter  of  experience  as  well  as  for  the 
form?  May  not  the  self  be  the  only  true  thing  in  itself? 
May  not  sense  and  understanding  both  spring  from  a 
common  to  us  unknown  root  ?  In  a  famous  passage  Kant 
himself  had  suggested,  in  a  purely  problematic  sense, 
this  very  possibility.  The  early  post-Kantian  idealists 
agreed  in  an  endeavor  to  frame  such  an  hypothesis, 
and  so  far  as  might  be,  to  develop  and  to  verify  it. 

Things  in  themselves  seemed  to  us,  a  moment  since, 
useless,  because  only  phenomena  are  definable  in  terms 
of  human  knowledge.  Now  we  see  two  motives  that  might 
tend  to  modify  this  general  verdict.  The  first  motive  is 
furnished  by  the  self.  In  the  case  of  the  self  there  exists  a 
problematic  union  of  observable  mental  phenomena  with 
a  practically  significant  assertion  of  its  own  ethical  sig- 
nificance on  the  part  of  the  self — a  problematic  union  of 
"I  seem  to  be  thus  or  thus  in  my  mental  state"  with 
"I  will  do  this  or  this."  This  union  of  the  phenomenal 
and  the  significant,  of  the  mere  sequence  of  states  and  the 
originative  will,  suggests  that  we  are  deeper  than  we  seem 
to  be.  We  are  more  than  merely  phenomenal.  The  second 
motive  lies  in  the  fact  that  while  the  phenomena,  al- 
though objective,  are  still  our  own  experience,  and  thus 
partake  of  the  nature  of  the  self,  they  still  seem  such 
that  we  are  not  now  conscious  why  they  belong  to  the 
self.  We  are  not  now  conscious  why  we  experience  what 
we  do  experience.  This  suggests  the  possibility  that  the 
experience  of  the  self  has,  like  our  own  deeds,  a  source 
in  the  now  hidden  nature  of  the  self. 

Both  these  motives  proved  potent  with  the  post-Kant- 

44 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
ian  idealism.  How  potent,  and  with  how  reasonable  a 
result,  we  shall  later  see. 

IV. 

We  have  now  seen  one  instability  of  Kant's  view  re- 
garding knowledge,  and  have  defined  one  tendency  that 
led  later  thinkers  to  modify  his  view.  Herewith  the  case 
for  a  modification  of  Kant's  views  is  not  closed.  Kant 
undertook  to  define  with  precision  the  a  priori  forms  in 
terms  of  which  our  intelligence  finds  its  own  in  the  phe- 
nomena. The  question  very  naturally  arises:  How  did 
he  find  out  what  these  forms  are?  His  list  of  them  is 
made  up,  indeed,  of  familiar  names:  time,  space,  the 
four  types  of  categories,  that  is,  quantity,  quality,  re- 
lation, modality — all  of  them  terms  which  either  com- 
mon usage  or  the  technical  language  of  the  traditional 
logic  had  long  since  made  known.  Kant  used  these 
and  certain  other  terms  to  define  a  supposedly  exhaus- 
tive list  of  the  forms  which,  according  to  him,  our  intel- 
ligence imposes  a  priori  upon  all  phenomena.  But  the 
very  fact  that  Kant  especially  emphasized  the  exhaus- 
tive character  of  this  list,  readily  aroused  the  question : 
What  kind  of  knowledge  can  we  possess  which  enables 
us  to  be  sure  that  just  these  and  no  others  are  the  a  priori 
forms?  The  natural  answer  to  this  question  would  be: 
We  know  these  forms  because  they  are  characteristic 
of  the  human  self.  Since  this  is  our  own  self,  we  can 
be  sure  of  its  forms  by  simply  reflecting  upon  its  na- 
ture. But  this  answer  at  once  arouses  a  retort.  The 
self,  as  we  have  just  seen,  is,  in  some  respects,  a  very 
mysterious  being.  Yet  Kant  knows  it  well  enough  to  be 
sure  what  are  the  necessary  a  priori  forms  of  its  intel- 
ligence. If  one  turns  back  to  his  deduction  of  the  cate- 
gories to  see  just  what,  if  you  admit  the  cogency  of 

45 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
his  main  argument,  he  may  be  said  to  have  proved 
in  that  discussion,  then  at  best  his  argument  seems  to 
be  that  the  objects  of  our  experience  must  conform  to 
whatever  types  of  structure  are  in  fact  essential  to  the 
working  of  our  human  intelligence.  This  result  may  be 
fully  admitted,  and  yet  the  possibility  remains  that  in 
our  imperfect  reflections,  we  might  be  led  to  view  as  es- 
sential to  the  possibility  of  intelligent  experience  cer- 
tain forms  of  conceptual  structure  which  really  are 
not  essential,  but  which  happen  to  be  due  merely  to  our 
present  habits  of  mind.  Thus,  one  who  speaks  English, 
and  who  thinks  in  English,  has  his  ways  of  conceiving 
the  structure  of  things  considerably  modified  by  the 
habits  of  English  speech.  In  fact,  Aristotle's  table  of 
categories  was  much  influenced  by  considerations  that 
were  largely  of  a  grammatical  rather  than  of  as  deep  a 
metaphysical  significance  as  he  himself  supposed.  In  any 
case,  such  considerations  as  those  which  are  mainly  sug- 
gested by  English  or  by  Greek  linguistic  usage  are  not 
essential  to  the  structure  of  the  intelligence.  Phenomena 
need  not,  as  it  were,  speak  to  us  in  English  nor  yet  in 
Greek  forms,  in  order  to  be  understood.  A  genuinely 
stable,  a  truly  fundamental,  system  of  categories,  must 
therefore  be  founded  upon  considerations  that  are  inde- 
pendent of  language,  or  of  any  other  changeable  acci- 
dents of  the  development  of  human  intelligence.  Now 
one  may  well  ask  whether  Kant  has  secured,  by  any  ar- 
ticulate procedure,  that  his  table  of  categories  shall  con- 
tain the  forms  really  necessary  to  our  understanding  of 
facts,  and  no  other — forms  not  accidental,  merely  lin- 
guistic, or  otherwise  conventional.  If,  in  order  to  test 
this  issue,  we  ask  whence  Kant  derived  his  list  of  the 
necessary  forms  of  the  intelligence,  the  answer  is  that 

46 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
he  derived  his  view  of  the  forms  of  our  sensibility,  i.e., 
time  and  space,  from  a  study  of  the  logic  of  geometry 
as  he  understood  that  logic,  while  he  obtained  his  table 
of  the  categories  of  the  understanding  in  a  somewhat 
more  superficial  way,  viz.,  from  a  consideration  of  the 
traditional  classification  of  judgments  that  the  textbooks 
of  formal  logic  contained.  In  any  case,  his  list  of  the 
forms  essential  to  our  intelligence  looks  rather  empir- 
ical. He  gives  us  no  reason  why  just  these  forms  and  no 
others  must  result  from  the  very  nature  of  a  self  such 
as  ours.  No  one  principle  seems  to  define  the  whole  list. 
His  forms  appear  in  his  account  without  any  statement 
of  their  genesis  and  with  no  acceptable  discussion  of  the 
reasons  for  holding  his  list  to  be  exhaustive.  And  his 
statement  that  since  these  are  our  own  forms  we  must 
be  able  to  know  what  they  are,  seems  inconsistent  with 
his  equally  express  admission  that  the  true  nature  of  the 
self  is  unknown  to  us. 

It  seems  impossible,  then,  to  accept  the  main  princi- 
ples of  Kant's  deduction  of  the  categories  without  at 
once  proceeding  to  supplement  that  deduction.  One  can- 
not hope  to  know  so  much  about  the  nature  of  the  hu- 
man intelligence  as  Kant  wants  us  to  know,  without  also 
undertaking  to  know  more  than  he  furnishes.  If  one  ac- 
cepts in  principle  the  Kantian  deduction,  one  must 
surely  attempt  to  comprehend  the  relation  of  the  cate- 
gories to  the  self ;  and  one  must  seek  to  discover  a  genu- 
ine unity  of  principle  which  may  connect  the  various 
categories  with  one  another,  and  with  the  time  and  space 
forms.  This  unity  of  principle,  if  discoverable  at  all, 
must  result  from  something  which  shall  prove  to  be 
knowable  about  the  self  and  about  its  relation  to  ex- 
perience. In  substance.  Kant's  deduction  says  that  the 

47 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
world  of  phenomena  must  conform  to  the  type  of  our  in- 
telligence, because,  to  use  a  modern  phrase  previously 
employed,  a  certain  survival  of  the  fittest  phenomena 
in  the  mental  process  that  prepares  phenomena  to  be 
known,  must  antedate,  as  it  were,  our  own  actual  con- 
sciousness of  any  observable  phenomenal  facts.  "We  can 
only  know  such  phenomena  as  are  fit  to  be  known — an 
expression  which  contains,  in  fact,  Kant's  whole  deduc- 
tion in  a  nutshell.  Such  fitness  presupposes  an  adapta- 
tion of  all  phenomenal  facts  to  the  essential  conditions 
that  make  them  intelligible,  an  adaption  to  the  out- 
line scheme  which  any  such  intelligent  being  as  we  are 
imposes  a  priori  upon  facts.  Were  facts  possible  that  were 
not  thus  adapted  to  the  forms  of  our  intelligence,  then  we 
should  never  notice  such  facts  as  objective  phenomena 
at  all.  They  would  perish  from  our  experience  before 
they  were  identified,  or  at  best  would  remain  for  us  mere 
dreams.  Now  if  you  accept  this  Kantian  conception  of 
the  structure  of  experience  as,  in  general,  correct,  you 
all  the  more  feel  the  need  to  define  just  what  these  es- 
sential conditions  of  intelligibility  are,  and  you  need 
also  to  be  sure  of  the  adequacy  of  your  definition.  But 
since  the  essential  is  that  which  some  principle,  some 
reason,  distinguishes  from  the  merely  accidental,  you 
thus  demand  a  supplementary  deduction  of  the  catego- 
ries which  shall  show  not  merely  the  necessity  of  catego- 
ries in  general,  but  why  just  these  categories  are  required 
by  that  very  principle,  whatever  it  is,  upon  which  the 
entire  intelligent  life  of  the  self  logically  depends.  Some 
one  such  principle  there  must  be,  from  Kant's  own  point 
of  view,  in  case  there  is  to  be  one  self  at  all  (instead  of 
a  mere  variety  of  types  of  selfhood)  characteristic  of 
our  human  nature. 

48 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
To  deduce  the  categories  from  the  nature  of  the  self, 
and  in  doing  so  to  reduce  them  all,  and  if  possible,  the 
whole  of  philosophy  to  a  system  of  results  derived  from 
a  single  principle — this  undertaking  consequently  be- 
came, for  the  post-Kantians,  a  characteristic  ideal.  The 
presence  of  this  ideal  determines  the  form  of  their  sys- 
tematic investigations.  They  do  not  want  merely  to  de- 
duce in  general  the  applicability  of  our  categories  to  all 
phenomena.  They  want  to  deduce  each  category  in  its 
order.  They  want  to  show  why  our  intelligence  demands, 
by  virtue  of  some  one  principle  of  the  self,  the  use  of 
specific  categories,  and  how  each  category  determines  in 
its  place  in  the  whole  system,  the  structure  of  its  own 
class  or  of  its  own  aspect  of  facts. 

This  investigation,  once  attempted,  almost  inevitably 
leads  to  a  much  closer  relation  between  the  categories 
and  the  data  of  experience  than  Kant  had  admitted.  For 
one  thing,  time  and  space,  which  Kant  views  as  irredu- 
cible forms  of  our  sensibility  and  as  very  distinct  from 
the  categories  of  the  understanding,  are  in  general  con- 
sidered, by  the  post-Kantians,  as  in  principle  inseparable 
from,  and  as  definable  in,  terms  of  the  categories.  More- 
over, even  the  very  data  of  sense  themselves,  which  Kant 
had  regarded  as  an  externally  given  material,  could  not 
escape  from  at  least  an  effort,  on  the  part  of  the  later 
philosophy,  to  view  them  as  also  determined  by  the  na- 
ture, although  perhaps  by  the  now  hidden  and  uncon- 
scious nature  of  the  self.  There  existed,  therefore,  in  the 
view  of  these  idealists,  the  need  for  a  deduction,  not  in- 
deed of  the  single  data  of  sense  themselves,  but,  in  any 
case,  of  the  reason  why  such  apparently  irreducible  data 
have  to  be  presented  to  the  self.  This  deduction,  if  once 
attempted,  would  have  to  employ  the  same  principle  from 

49 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

whose  unity  the  variety  of  the  categories  was  also  to  be 
deduced.  For  otherwise  philosophy  would  not  attain  that 
unity  of  system  which  these  successors  of  Kant  de- 
manded. To  be  sure,  it  is  false  to  imagine  that  any  post- 
Kantian  idealist  ever  undertook  to  deduce  a  priori  the 
necessity  that  just  this  sound  or  this  color  or  this  pain 
should  be  present  at  a  given  moment  to  your  senses.  For 
plainly  the  single  fact  of  sense  can  not  in  general  be 
predicted  except  upon  the  basis  of  previous  data  of 
senses.  But  the  effort  to  define  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  self,  why  its  current  experience  must  seem  foreign 
to  it,  and  why  its  intelligence  has  to  be  expressed  in  the 
form  of  a  conflict  with  this  apparently  alien  world  of 
sense  facts — this  effort,  I  say,  played  no  small  part  in 
the  early  idealism.  Whatever  you  may  think  of  the  re- 
sult, the  effort  was  a  natural  one,  for  it  was  closely  as- 
sociated with  the  motives  which,  as  we  have  JQOW  seen, 
led  to  the  view  that  things  in  themselves,  beyond  the 
self,  are  mere  fictions ;  so  that  we  have  to  deal  in  philos- 
ophy, on  the  one  hand  with  the  phenomena,  and  on  the 
other  with  the  self,  whose  phenomena  they  are. 

V. 

In  our  sketch  of  the  situation  we  have  now  passed  in 
review  three  of  the  four  ideas  which,  at  the  outset  of 
this  lecture,  we  regarded  as  summing  up  the  sense  of 
the  Kantian  deduction.  The  view  that  we  know  phenom- 
ena, and  not  things  in  themselves,  the  accompanying  as- 
sertion that  we  know  the  a  priori  forms  of  the  intelli- 
gence, the  thesis  that  these  forms  are  imposed  a  priori 
<upon  the  matter  which  the  senses  furnish,  while  never- 
theless the  forms  do  not,  of  themselves,  predetermine 

50 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
this  matter  which  fills  them  out — these  features  of 
Kant's  doctrine  inevitably  led,  as  we  have  seen,  to  new 
reflections,  and  so  to  modifications  of  his  theses.  The 
things  in  themselves  become  of  so  problematic  a  nature 
that  they  come  to  appear  useless  furniture  of  which 
philosophy  must  rid  itself.  Or  if  any  such  concept  is, 
for  the  idealists,  to  survive  at  all,  it  must  survive,  as 
would  seem,  in  the  shape  of  whatever  is  at  the  heart  or 
at  the  root  of  the  self.  The  categories  require  a  new  de- 
duction, which  shall,  if  possible,  connect  them  with 
time,  with  space,  with  one  another,  and  with  the  self, 
according  to  some  single  principle  which  shall  determine 
how  the  self  needs  just  these  forms.  The  source  of  the 
very  matter  of  sense  itself  must  be  brought,  if  possible, 
into  some  relation  with  the  nature  of  the  self,  and  with 
the  single  principle  just  mentioned,  in  such  a  manner 
that  it  may  become  evident  why  the  self  needs,  after  all, 
to  view  its  own  realm  of  sense  facts  as  an  alien  realm, 
even  in  order  to  win  it  over,  through  intelligent  articula- 
tion, to  some  conscious  unity  with  the  purpose  of  the 
reason.  In  other  words,  whatever  principle  is  at  the  basis 
of  self-consciousness  must,  if  possible,  be  shown  to  be 
also  the  principle  that  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  sense  world 
Thus  only  could  Kant's  philosophy  be  rendered  satis 
factory  to  the  very  minds  which  took  the  warmest  in- 
terest  in  its  fashion  of  analyzing  experience. 

The  fourth  one  in  our  list  of  the  characteristic 
thoughts  of  Kant's  deduction  still  remains  to  be  con- 
sidered. This  was  the  thought  that  all  our  possible  ex- 
perience must  be  viewed  as  connected  and  as  interre- 
lated, by  virtue  of  the  very  fact  that  it  is  to  be  defined 
as  the  experience  of  one  virtual  self.  This  virtual  self 
appears  to  be  not  merely  the  intelligent  observer,  from 

51 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
moment  to  moment,  of  each  passing  fact,  but  also  the 
possessor,  in  some  sense,  of  all  facts  at  once.  ' '  There  is, ; ' 
said  Kant,  "but  one  experience,"  and  all  experiences 
are  to  be  viewed  as  parts  of  this  one  experience.  Here 
was  a  thought  which  Kant  had  emphasized,  but  which 
he  had  also  kept,  after  a  fashion  very  characteristic  of 
his  own  habits  of  suspended  judgment,  in  a  state  of  de- 
liberately arrested  development. 

Whatever  possible  experience  I  acknowledge — let  us 
say,  an  experience  of  the  physical  state  of  the  interior 
of  the  earth,  or  of  a  remote  event  in  the  past  history 
of  the  cosmos — I  acknowledge  that  fact  only  by  placing 
it  in  the  same  virtual  unity  of  experience  in  which  my 
present  observations  have  their  place.  So  teaches  Kant. 
Thereby  he  defines,  as  he  believes,  that  sort  and  degree 
of  objectivity  in  phenomena  which  the  logic  of  empirical 
science  demands.  Knowledge  is  only  of  things  experi- 
enced. But  knowledge  is  not  concerned  merely  with  the 
here  and  now  of  experience.  Knowledge  is  concerned 
with  the  relation  of  every  phenomenon  to  the  whole  of 
experience. 

Now  who  has  this  whole  of  experience?  Not  I,  in  so 
far  as  here  and  now  I  observe  facts.  In  the  whole  of  ex- 
perience, your  experience,  and  the  experiences  of  Galileo, 
of  Newton,  of  whoever  has  observed  or  is  yet  to  observe 
phenomena,  have  their  places.  Experience  is  no  private 
affair.  It  belongs  to  all  human  kind.  We  share  in  it  as 
we  share  in  a  common  national  existence  or  in  a  common 
humanity.  The  knowing  self  which  is  viewed  as  the  one 
subject  of  experience  must  at  least  virtually  be  viewed  as 
the  self  of  mankind,  rather  than  as  the  transient  intelli- 
gent activity  of  any  mortal  amongst  us. 

52 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
Kant  repeatedly,  in  effect  although  never  in  quite  as 
express  words  as  I  have  just  used,  indicates  that  we  can 
only  deal  with  the  objective  facts  of  human  science  by 
regarding  all  human  experience  as  if  it  constituted  a  sin- 
gle whole.  It  is,  to  my  mind,  equally  clear  that  this  unity 
remains  for  Kant  a  virtual  unity,  never  anything  in 
which  he  believes  as  a  concrete  and  conscious  mental 
reality.  How  the  mental  processes  of  various  men  are  ul- 
timately and  metaphysically  related  to  one  another,  Kant 
does  not  know.  That  remains  among  the  insoluble  mys- 
teries of  the  hidden  real  nature  of  things.  But  when 
we  believe  any  observed  physical  phenomena  to  be  ob- 
jectively real,  we  regard  our  own  empirical  judgments, 
made  regarding  such  observed  facts,  as  valid  for  all  men. 
A  judgment  about  experience  is  valid,  according  to  Kant, 
because  the  conditions  which  determine  the  unity  of  a 
man's  consciousness  require  it  to  be  valid.  It  must  fol- 
low that  what  we  view  as  the  conditions  which  determine 
our  own  unity  of  consciousness  we  also  view  as  the  con- 
ditions which  determine  the  unity  of  every  other  man's 
consciousness.  Moreover,  all  the  objective  empirical  facts 
which  are  valid  for  any  of  us,  each  of  us  views  as  bound 
up  in  a  single  unity  of  experience,  namely  his  own  unity. 
This  single  unity  must  then  be  virtually  the  same  for  all 
men,  since  any  man's  objective  empirical  facts  are,  if 
rightly  defined,  valid  for  every  other  man.  How  one  can 
thus  view  this  virtual  unity  as  genuine,  without  con- 
ceiving the  intelligent  selves  of  all  men  as  constituting 
the  expression  of  an  actually  and  concretely  real  self- 
hood, wherein  all  men  share,  does  not  and  cannot  appear 
from  Kant's  carefully  guarded  expressions.  This  point 
also  was  one  upon  which  he  simply  kept  his  judgment 
suspended.  It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  one  of  the 

53 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
problems  of  the  later  idealism  should  be  the  relation  of 
the  individual  human  self  to  the  other  intelligent  human 
selves. 

Herewith  we  touch  upon  one,  although  not  upon  the 
only  motive  that  strongly  influences  the  later  idealists 
to  use,  in  addition  to  the  term  self,  another  term,  viz., 
the  term  Absolute.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  con- 
cept of  the  self,  as  Kant  had  defined  that  term,  deepened 
its  significance  as  one  reflected  upon  the  manifold  offices 
which  the  self  had  to  fulfil  in  later  philosophy.  The 
self  is  the  knower  whose  categories  predetermine  the 
form  of  all  phenomena.  The  self  is  also  the  doer  whose 
acts  have  a  more  than  phenomenal  meaning.  The  self 
has,  in  addition,  a  nature  that,  although  single  and 
united,  determines  a  variety  of  categories  in  accordance 
with  some  unity  of  principle  which  philosophy  must 
attempt  to  define.  Yet  further,  the  self  has  a  funda- 
mental nature  which  must,  at  least  in  general,  determine 
not  only  the  form  but  in  some  still  hidden  sense  the 
very  matter  of  experience.  But  now,  above  all,  this  con- 
cept of  the  self  must  be  so  enriched  as  to  become  not 
merely  individual  but  social.  For  we  all,  not  merely  any 
one  individual  alone,  are  its  offspring  and  its  expression. 

To  such  postulates  the  post-Kantian  idealists  were 
led  by  a  process  whose  logic  I  have  thus  endeavored  to 
sketch.  You  may  think  what  you  will  of  their  results.  It 
is  interesting  to  remark,  even  at  this  stage  of  our  inquiry, 
that  their  most  significant  subsequent  work  was  related 
to  the  matter  to  which  we  have  just  alluded.  The  post- 
Kantian  idealism  was  noteworthy  in  its  analysis  of  the 
conditions  of  knowledge.  But  as  we  shall  find  in  the  se- 
quel, it  was  still  more  noteworthy  in  its  development  of 
social  concepts,  and  in  its  decidedly  fruitful  study  of  the 

54 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
relations  which  bind  the  individual  self  to  that  unity  of 
selfhood  which  includes  all  individuals. 

The  idealists  have  been  much  ridiculed  by  their  crit- 
ics for  their  use  of  the  term  "The  Absolute."  It  may  in- 
terest us  to  learn  that  one  of  the  chief  motives  for  sub- 
stituting the  term  "Absolute"  for  the  term  "self"  as  the 
name  for  the  principle  of  philosophy,  was  interwoven 
with  motives  furnished  by  the  social  consciousness.  For 
whatever  else  the  later  idealism  proved  to  be,  we  shall 
find  that  it  included,  as  one  of  its  most  notable  parts,  a 
social  philosophy.  And  whoever  wishes  to  understand 
modern  social  doctrines,  will  do  well  to  take  account  of 
the  contribution  to  that  sort  of  thinking  which  was  made 
by  idealism. 

Note  to  Lecture  II. 

[The  editor  finds  the  author's  following  criticism  of 
Kant  here  pertinent.  The  passage  is  from  an  early  un- 
published fragment  entitled  "Some  Characteristics  of 
Being."] 

Kant  has  an  ontology.  The  recognition  of  the  things 
in  themselves  as  obvious  presuppositions  is,  for  him,  an 
essential  part  of  the  doctrine  which  sets  definite  limits 
to  our  knowledge,  and  which  declares  the  things  in  them- 
selves unknowable.  Nor  does  the  Kantian  ontology  cease 
with  the  mere  recognition  of  the  things  in  themselves. 
In  various  ways  these  unknowable  realities  become,  as 
it  were,  inevitably  entangled  in  the  fortunes  of  the  world 
3f  knowledge.  And  one  of  the  most  curious  instances  of 
this  entanglement  appears  in  the  Kantian  theory  of  the 
process  whereby  knowledge  itself  comes  to  be  consti- 
tuted. 

The  definitive  form  of  the  critical  theory  of  knowl- 

55 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
edge,  as  appears  from  the  well-known  letter  to  Herz,  had 
its  origin  in  a  reflection  upon  a  certain  specific  ontolog- 
ical  situation  to  which  Kant's  attention  had  been  at- 
tracted immediately  after  the  discovery  of  the  antino- 
mies, and  the  consequent  abandonment  of  any  reality  for 
time  and  space  beyond  the  knowing  mind's  sensuous  con- 
stitution had  led  Kant  to  feel  himself  as  it  were  more  es- 
tranged from  the  realm  of  the  noumena.  In  consequence 
of  this  sense  of  estrangement,  Kant  was  led  to  say :  If  the 
realities  beyond  and  the  understanding  within  are  thus 
essentially,  and  of  course  ontologically  sundered,  as  in 
separate  realms  of  being,  how  is  the  relation  of  knowl- 
edge to  its  object  possible  at  all  ?  For  Kant  at  this  stage, 
then,  as  for  so  many  other  thinkers,  the  epistemological 
problem  is  subordinate  to  the  ontological  theory.  Knower 
and  noumenon  are,  as  beings,  apart  from  one  another. 
And  it  is  supposed  to  be  known  that  this  situation  is  a 
fact.  The  epistemology  does  not  first  prove  to  the  thinker 
this  ontological  result;  rather  is  the  epistemology  in- 
vented to  meet  issues  suggested  by  the  ontological  pre- 
supposition. "Allein,"  says  Kant,  "unser  Verstand  ist 
durch  seine  Vorstellungen  weder  die  Ursache  des  Gegen- 
standes  (ausser  in  der  Moral  von  den  guten  Zwecken), 
noch  der  Gegenstand  die  Ursache  der  Verstandesvorstel- 
lungen  (in  sensu  reali).  Die  reinen  Verstandesbegriffe 
miissen  ...  in  der  Natur  der  Seele  zwar  ihre  Quellen  ha- 
ben,  aber  doch  weder  insofern  sie  vom  Object  gewirkt 
werden,  noch  das  Object  selbst  hervorbringen.  Ich  hatte 
mich  in  der  Dissertation  damit  begniigt  die  Natur  der 
Intellectual- Vorstellungen  bloss  negativ  auszudriicken : 
dass  sie  namlich  nicht  Modificationen  der  Seele  durch 
den  Gegenstand  waren.  Wie  aber  denn  sonst  eine  Vor- 
stellung,  die  sich  anf  einen  Gegenstand  bezieht,  ohne 

56 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
von  ihm  auf  einige  Weise  afficirt  zu  sein,  moglich,  iiber- 
ging   ich   mit   Stillschweigen. "    To   the   question   thus 
raised,  Kant  devoted  himself  thenceforth   during  the 
elaboration  of  his  new  critical  doctrine. 

But  if  the  presupposition  of  the  new  epistemology  was 
ontological,  the  further  procedure  was  not  less  so.  Every- 
one knows  that  complex  and  in  some  respects  variable 
doctrine  of  the  way  in  which  Verstand,  Sinnlichkeit, 
Einbildungskraft,  and  finally  Vernunft,  cooperate  to 
bring  to  pass  the  structure  which  the  critical  doctrine 
calls  human  knowledge,  the  various  grades  of  "syn- 
thesis," the  "hidden"  operations  of  the  Einbildungs- 
kraft, the  list  of  categories,  the  perplexing  doctrine  of 
the  Schema.  Now  the  result  of  all  this  theory  is  well 
known — the  situation  in  which  it  leaves  human  experi- 
ence, the  limitation  and  the  correlated  necessities  of 
the  empirical  sciences,  the  new  type  of  objectivity 
which  Kant  defines,  in  his  theory  of  Mogliche  Erfah- 
rung — in  brief,  the  whole  teaching  concerning  our  cog- 
nitive relations  to  reality  which  Kant  so  significantly 
sets  forth  as  his  critical  outcome.  But  many  a  reader  has 
noted,  wi!;h  a  perplexity  not  easily  to  be  satisfied  through 
any  study  of  Kant's  text,  one  question  which  the  entire 
discussion  raises,  but  always  keeps  in  the  background. 
Such,  Kant  tells  us,  is  the  limitation  of  knowledge,  be- 
cause such  is  the  process  by  means  of  which  knowledge 
comes  to  pass.  Sense  affects,  apprehension  beholds,  sense- 
forms  embrace,  imagination,  toiling  as  it  were  in  the 
dark,  schematizes,  categories  consequently  pervade  the 
whole  material  of  experience.  There  results  an  ordered 
whole,  full  of  a  transcendental  affinity  of  fact  and  fact, 
a  whole  centered  about  the  ever  possible  thought  "It  is 
I  who  think  thus."  This  whole,  always  more  or  less  ideal, 

57 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
a  life-plan,  as  it  were,  but  never  a  completed  career 
for  our  understanding,  is  the  realm  of  experience,  a 
fruitful  and  well-ordered  island  in  the  ocean  of  ontolog- 
ical  mysteries.  This  then  is  our  kingdom  of  knowledge. 
This  it  is,  because  thus  it  is  made.  Yes,  one  asks,  but  this 
process  that  makes  knowledge,  is  it  a  real  process,  or 
only  a  seeming  process  ?  Has  the  process  any  being  of  its 
own,  or  is  it  only  an  ideal  construction  of  the  philoso- 
pher? The  answer  must  be  in  one  sense  obvious  enough. 
The  process  occurs.  It  is  real.  Because  it  has  being,  and 
true  being,  the  realm  of  knowledge  has  such  constitution 
as  belongs  to  it,  and  such  limits  as  Kant  defines.  But 
once  again :  Is  this  type  of  being  which  the  process  pos- 
sesses the  noumenal  type,  or  only  a  phenomenal  type? 
Is  it  only  a  matter  of  Mogliche  Erfahrung  that  such  a 
process  is  found  to  take  place?  Or  does  the  noumenal 
ego  in  any  sense  participate  in  the  process?  To  this 
question  a  satisfactory  answer  seems  hard,  upon  a  Kant- 
ian basis,  to  find. 

If  one  goes  back  to  the  original  ontological  presupposi- 
tions of  the  critical  theory,  one  finds  the  answer  to  our 
question  involving  considerations  that  appear  to  belong 
largely,  if  not  wholly,  to  the  realm  of  ultimate  or  noume- 
nal being.  Originally,  the  problem  of  the  letter  to  Herz 
ran,  as  we  have  seen,  thus :  It  is  presupposed  that  there 
are  two  beings,  or  rather  two  realms  of  being,  the  Ge- 
genstdnde  proper,  and  the  knowing  subject.  Now  the  lat- 
ter, the  knowing  subject,  pretends  to  be  aware  of  certain 
Verstandesbegriffe  which  tell  him  about  the  Gegenstdnde 
wie  sie  an  sick  sind.  But  the  Gegenstdnde  do  not  affect 
the  understanding  of  the  knowing  subject,  and  so  do  not 
directly  mould  the  latter  to  their  own  form.  How  then 
is  the  knowledge  possible  ?  The  critical  answer  runs  that, 

58 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
as  a  fact,  no  true  knowledge  of  the  Gegenstdnde  an  sich  is 
possible,  since  they,  unquestionably  real  as  they  remain, 
cannot  get  into  the  knowing  subject's  realm  of  experi- 
ence. As  a  fact,  the  knowing  subject's  realm  oi;  knowledge 
is  the  result  of  his  own  nature,  which,  by  virtue  of  its 
mechanism  aforesaid,  builds  up  the  structure  of  experi- 
ence, coherent,  and  relatively  objective,  but  still  inner. 

That  the  knowing  subject,  however,  has  this  mechan- 
ism, that  his  powers  do  thus  build  up  his  experience  by 
the  application  of  a  priori  forms,  this  would  seem  to  be 
itself  an  ontological  assertion  upon  the  same  level  as  the 
original  ontological  assertions  with  which  we  started.  We 
have  learned  to  know  that  we  do  not  know  the  Gegen- 
st'dnde  an  sich,  because  we  have  also  learned  to  know 
better  than  we  did  one  real  process  whose  being  is  as 
genuine  as  is  that  of  the  original  noumena  themselves. 
This  is  the  process  whereby  our  own  experience  gets  its 
structure.  This  process  occurs.  The  constitution  of  the 
island,  and  the  waves  that  limit  its  shores,  these  are  as 
real  as  are  the  hidden  wonders  of  the  unknown  ocean 
beyond.  And  unless  the  process  whereby  the  nature  and 
limits  of  knowledge  get  their  constitution  thus  possesses 
as  genuine  a  being  as  do  the  noumena  themselves,  it 
would  apparently  be  hard  to  make  out  in  what  sense  the 
Kantian  doctrine  of  the  limitations  of  knowledge  can  be 
called  a  really  true  doctrine  at  all. 

This  seems  to  be  one  answer  to  our  question.  But  the 
fact  seems  to  be  equally  clear  that  many  aspects  of 
Kant's  own  theory  forbid  the  acceptance  of  this  answer 
as  sufficient  from  his  own  point  of  view.  The  whole  spirit 
of  the  Kantian  deduction  of  the  categories,  especially  in 
its  later  forms,  tends  to  set  over  against  this  purely  onto- 
logical interpretation  of  the  basis  of  his  epistemology,  a 

59 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
far  more  decidedly  immanent  theory  according  to  which 
the  true  limitation  of  knowledge  is  discovered  by  a  proc- 
ess of  internal  reflection.  This  immanent  theory,  in  so 
far  as  Kant  indicates  its  scope,  assumes  several  fairly 
distinct  forms.  According  to  one  form,  we  discover  the 
limitations  of  knowledge  by  reflecting  that  science  every- 
where uses  certain  a  priori  principles,  whose  necessity 
conditions  the  very  possibility  of  science,  while  no  mere 
collection  of  experience  could  warrant,  and  no  preestab- 
lished  harmony  of  knowledge  and  of  noumenal  being 
could  adequately  establish  them.  But  science  is,  within 
the  realm  of  human  experience,  an  immanent,  but  still 
even  as  such,  an  unquestionable  fact.  Hence  science  must 
be  possible.  As,  from  the  nature  of  necessary  truth, 
known  to  us  a  priori,  no  commerce  with  things  in  them- 
selves could  make  science  possible,  the  necessity  of  the 
principles  of  science  must  be  itself  immanent,  while  of 
things  in  themselves  there  can  be  no  science. 

While  this  fashion  of  interpreting  the  basis  of  Kant's 
theory  does  not  wholly  avoid  (as  what  discussion  can 
avoid?)  existential  predicates,  it  does  indeed,  as  far  as 
it  goes,  tend  to  free  the  Kantian  epistemology  from  logi- 
cal dependence  upon  the  original  ontology,  and  tends  to 
make  Kant's  hypotheses  as  to  the  processes  whereby 
knowledge  gets  organized,  hypotheses  whose  warrant  is 
to  be  obtained,  if  at  all,  either  within  the  field  of  psy- 
chological experience  upon  the  one  hand,  or  by  the  aid  of 
general  epistemological  reflection  upon  the  other.  The 
only  trouble  with  this  aspect  of  the  doctrine  is  the  arbi- 
trariness of  the  epistemological  presupposition  that  sci- 
ence, with  necessary  a  priori  principles,  must  be  possible 
— an  assumption  which  Kant  never  sufficiently  main- 
tains against  a  possible  skepticism. 

60 


KANT'S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  SELF 
Kant  makes,  however,  yet  other  efforts  to  set  his  epis- 
temology upon  an  independent  basis.  The  efforts  grouped 
about  the  central  idea  of  the  Transcendental  Unity  of 
Apperception  are  the  deepest.  But  into  these  we  cannot 
here  go.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  upon  this  side  Kant  goes 
far  to  break  the  ontological  chains  in  which  he  had  first 
bound  himself.  Yet  his  theory,  as  he  expounds  it,  never 
fully  attains  the  freedom  at  which  Kant  unconsciously 
aimed.  To  the  end  it  remains  true  that,  as  Kant  states  his 
case,  his  theory  of  knowledge  generally  is  made  to  appear 
dependent  upon  an  assertion  that  the  processes  whereby 
knowledge  is  formed  are  real  facts  in  the  realm  of 
being,  a  being  that  might  as  well  be  called  as  genuine 
as  are  the  very  noumena  from  whose  presence  Kant 
intends  to  banish  us  altogether. 

In  so  far,  however,  as  this  is  the  case,  Kant  also  is 
condemned  to  his  own  decidedly  disheartening  form  of 
our  process  of  circular  proof  and  of  circular  definition, 
so  far  as  relates  to  his  ontology.  For  if  his  theory  of 
knowledge  is  dependent  upon  his  assumption  of  the  exist- 
ence of  a  certain  ontological  situation,  it  is  true  that 
Kant's  theory,  once  accepted,  forbids  us  to  define  any 
ontological  situation  whatever  except  as  purely  prob- 
lematic accounts  of  what  can  have  for  us  no  Bedeutung, 
no  true  meaning  whatever.  In  Kant's  case  then  the  circle 
is  that,  in  order  to  reach  his  epistemology,  as  he  usually 
states  the  latter,  one  has  to  accept  his  ontology,  while 
after  one  has  once  accepted  the  epistemology,  anything 
but  a  wholly  problematic  ontology  is  excluded.  Or  again, 
in  Kant's  case,  one  defines  true  or  noumenal  being  as 
that  which  cannot  be  known  because  such  and  such  is 
the  structure  of  knowledge,  while  one  argues  that  this 
account  of  the  structure  of  knowledge  is  true,  partly  at 

61 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

least  because  one  has  first  assumed  that  such  and  such  a 
real  process,  a  process  as  real  as  the  noumenal  being 
itself  from  which  one  started,  is  taking  place,  and  is 
limiting  knowledge  to  this  or  to  that  field. 


62 


LECTURE  III. 

THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE  AND 
THE   DIALECTICAL   METHOD. 

MY  former  lecture  was  devoted  to  a  general  study 
of  the  transition  from  Kant's  view  of  the  self 
to  that  deeper  but  more  problematic  conception 
of  the  self  which  characterized  the  later  idealism.  Be- 
fore characterizing  further  that  conception,  let  me  first 
remind  you  of  some  of  the  external  conditions  under 
which  the  German  philosophical  thinking  of  the  time 
now  in  question  took  place. 

I. 

Kant  published  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  in  1781. 
The  next  ten  years  were  marked  by  the  first  reception  of 
that  book  in  Germany,  by  the  earliest  efforts  to  under- 
stand, to  expound,  to  criticize,  and  to  supplement  Kant's 
doctrines,  and  also  by  the  appearance  of  the  most  impor- 
tant of  Kant's  own  further  expositions  of  his  principal 
philosophical  teaching.  In  1792  the  literary  career  of 
Fichte  began;  and  in  1794  that  philosopher  published 
the  first  statement  of  his  own  form  of  idealism,  in  his 
Wissenschaftslehre.  Almost  at  the  same  moment  the 
young  Schelling  set  out  upon  his  career  of  rapid,  bril- 
liant, and  changeful  expressions  of  doctrine.  In  the  last 
year  of  the  century,  Hegel's  professional  career  as  a 
teacher  of  philosophy  began,  when  he  went  as  Privat- 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
Docent  to  Jena;  and  his  own  characteristic  teachings 
received  their  first  extended  formulation  in  his  Phae- 
nbmenologie  des  Geistes,  published  in  1807.  All  these 
works  were,  at  the  moment,  but  single  examples  of  a  very 
large  philosophical  literature  which  Germany  was  pro- 
ducing in  those  years. 

We  are  here  concerned  with  the  beginnings  of  ideal- 
ism. It  requires  only  a  moment's  reflection  upon  the 
great  historical  events  that  were  contemporary  with  this 
remarkable  outburst  of  philosophical  activity,  to  remind 
us  what  manner  of  time  that  was.  In  a  general  sketch  of 
the  philosophical  situation  of  those  years,  I  have  indi- 
cated, in  my  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  some  of  the 
relations  of  the  philosophical  to  the  literary  movement  of 
that  period  in  Germany,  and  I  have  also  endeavored  in 
that  book  to  characterize  some  of  the  personalities  who 
were  concerned  in  both  movements.  It  is  not  my  purpose 
to  repeat  here  in  any  detail  these  more  popular  aspects 
of  the  early  history  of  idealism.  But  I  do  not  wish  you 
to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  abstract  thinking  whose 
fortunes  we  are  trying  to  portray,  was  inevitably,  and 
quite  normally,  a  reflection  of  the  tendencies  and  of  the 
problems  of  the  civilization  of  just  that  age.  I  beg  you 
to  keep  this  fact  in  mind  as  you  follow  these  lectures, 
whenever  the  problems  and  the  theories  of  the  philoso- 
phers seem  to  you,  for  the  moment,  hopelessly  remote 
and  unreal.  Philosophy  and  life  were  then  in  far  closer 
touch  than,  as  I  fear,  they  are  today  in  the  minds  of 
many  people.  All  this  technical  speech  of  categories  and 
of  knowledge,  of  phenomena  and  of  the  self,  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  Absolute — all  this  speech,  I  say,  was 
rendered  vital  to  the  philosophically  disposed  readers  of 
that  time  by  the  fact  that,  to  their  minds,  it  bore  upon  the 

64 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
very  life  problems  which  the  Revolution  and  the  new 
social  ideals  and  the  passions  of  the  romantic  movement 
made  so  prominent. 

Kant's  first  Critique  had  won  so  wide  a  public  hearing 
in  Germany,  in  the  eighties  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
largely  because  of  the  emphasis  which  its  happily  chosen 
title  put  upon  the  interests  of  the  human  reason.  The 
word  reason  was  to  the  age  that  immediately  antedated 
the  French  Revolution  very  much  what  the  word  evolu- 
tion has  been  to  our  own  generation — a  sort  of  general 
comforter  of  all  those  who  felt  puzzled  and  longed  for 
light.  "Whatever  the  issue,  the  enlightened  souls  of  that 
time  said,  "Reason  will  set  us  right."  Reason  was  to  be 
the  all-powerful  substitute  for  religion,  tradition,  super- 
stition, authority,  custom,  prejudice,  oppression,  in  brief 
for  whatever  man  happened  to  view  as  a  galling  harness. 
Reason  was  to  be  a  chain  breaker,  jail  deliverer,  world 
reformer.  Thus,  when  Kant  undertook  in  his  Critique 
an  exhaustive  survey  of  the  province,  the  powers,  and 
the  limits  of  the  reason,  he  had  in  his  favor  not  merely 
technical  but  also  deep-seated  popular  interests.  So  he 
won  a  well-deserved  attention. 

The  results  of  Kant's  Critique  seemed  to  many  disap- 
pointingly negative.  But  then,  that  was  an  age  of  great 
destructions.  When  the  Revolution  came,  many  institu- 
tions which  had  long  seemed  to  be  things  in  themselves, 
showed  that  they  were  nothing  but  phenomena.  And 
when  new  constitutions  and  new  social  orders  had  to  be 
planned,  the  spirit  of  the  age  emphasized  the  fact  that, 
at  least  in  the  social  world,  it  is  the  office  of  the  human 
intelligence  to  impose  its  own  forms  upon  the  phenomena, 
and  to  accept  no  authority  but  that  of  the  rational  self. 
So  in  that  day  the  spirit  of  the  Kantian  philosophy 

65 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
reflected,  in  a  very  practical  sense,  the  tendencies  of  the 
age.  The  destructive  as  well  as  the  constructive  features 
of  this  new  philosophy  were  in  harmony  with  that  re- 
forming spirit  in  consequence  of  which  the  word  rea- 
son at  length  became,  as  the  Revolutionary  ideals 
matured,  not  a  mere  name,  but  a  term  for  a  great  regu- 
lative force,  whose  value  lay  no  longer  in  its  vaguely 
abstract  authority  but  in  its  creative  power,  in  its  capac- 
ity to  mould  plastic  phenomena  into  conformity  with  its 
forms. 

The  transition  from  Kant's  philosophy  to  the  later 
idealism  was  again  a  reflection  of  the  spirit  which  de- 
termined the  course  of  contemporary  social  events. 
Three  features  marked  the  mental  life  in  Germany  dur- 
ing the  decades  with  which  the  eighteenth  century 
closed  and  the  nineteenth  century  opened,  say  from 
1770  to  1805.  The  first  feature  was  the  great  development 
of  actual  productive  power  in  scholarship,  in  literature, 
in  imaginative  work  generally,  and  the  accompanying 
increase  in  the  popular  respect  for  great  individuals. 
This  tendency  is  visible  from  1770  until  the  close  of  the 
old  century.  The  second  feature  was  that  deepening  of 
sentiment,  that  enrichment  of  emotional  life,  which  char- 
acterized first  the  storm  and  stress  period,  and  later 
both  the  classical  and  the  romantic  literatures  of  Ger- 
many in  those  decades.  The  third  feature  was  that  rela- 
tive indifference  to  mere  political  fortunes,  that  spirit 
of  world-citizenship,  that  fondness  for  what  Jean  Paul 
called  "the  empire  of  the  air,"  which  by  the  close  of 
the  old  century  became  so  characteristic  of  the  most 
representative  Germans  at  the  very  time  when,  as  the 
Napoleonic  period  began,  the  national  unity  and  even 
the  political  existence  of  Germany  seemed  to  be  hope- 

66 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
lessly  lost.  These  three  features  of  German  mental  life 
had  a  close  connection  with  the  great  social  movements 
of  that  period.  The  spirit  of  the  revolutionary  age,  even 
before  1789,  had  set  free  the  great  individuals.  The 
intense  social  activities  of  Europe  after  the  political  rev- 
olution began,  found  their  expression,  in  Germany,  not 
indeed  for  the  time  in  effective  political  reconstructions, 
but  rather  in  the  form  of  a  vast  increase  both  of  scholarly 
and  of  imaginatively  creative  mental  life.  Meanwhile  this 
age  of  great  experiences  not  unnaturally  became  also  an 
age  of  great  romantic  emotions,  in  which  Germany,  by 
virtue  of  the  temperament  of  her  people,  led  the  way. 
And  at  a  period  when  political  and  military  successes 
proved  to  be  impossible  for  the  divided  Germany  as  it 
then  was,  the  representative  leaders  of  German  public 
opinion  preserved  their  spiritual  independence,  protected 
their  individuality  by  deliberately  ignoring,  or  else  by 
defying  political  fortunes,  in  brief  by  aiming  to  show 
their  moral  superiority  to  the  external  mishaps  of  their 
country.  This  was  the  age  and  the  land  for  a  somewhat 
unpractical  and  fantastical  idealism.  It  was  also  the 
land  and  the  age  for  really  great  thoughts,  whose  influ- 
ence in  later  times  and  in  other  forms  will  be  permanent. 
Two  topics  were  thus  rendered  especially  prominent  in 
the  minds  of  representative  German  thinkers,  whether 
they  were  technical  philosophers  or  not.  The  first  was 
the  self,  not  merely  what  we  now  call  the  empirical  ego 
of  psychology,  but  the  significant  self,  the  hero  of  the 
storm  and  stress  literature  of  the  seventies  and  eighties, 
and  of  the  romantic  emotions  of  later  literary  art,  the 
sovereign  of  the  new  spiritual  order — the  self  that  could 
rise  above  fortune  and  win  without  external  aid.  The 
second  was  what  one  may  call,  in  a  well-known  sense, 

67 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
the  invisible  world  in  which  the  self  is  immersed — the 
realm  into  which  Goethe's  Faust  seeks  to  penetrate  at 
the  outset  of  the  poem — the  region,  namely,  of  ideal 
truths,  of  truths  which  you  do  not  so  much  discover 
through  observing  either  physical  or  political  facts,  as 
by  investigating  moral  and  aesthetic  truth,  and  by  con- 
sulting what  you  may  at  first  imagine  to  be  magic  powers. 
So  far  as  the  self  was  prominent  in  the  minds  of  the 
Germans  of  that  time,  the  tendencies  of  the  age  were 
towards  a  somewhat  romantic  type  of  individualism. 
Goethe's  Faust  in  its  earliest  form,  Schiller's  early 
dramas,  Goethe's  Prometheus,  Friederich  Schlegel's  ro- 
mantic irony,  Fichte  's  popular  work  called  the  Vocation 
of  Man — these  are  representative  expressions  of  the 
various  sorts  of  individualism  to  which  this  period  sooner 
or  later  gave  birth.  Such  individualism  was  seldom  of  the 
type  which  Nietzsche  has  in  our  own  days  emphasized. 
The  well-known  doctrine  of  Nietzsche  is  that  of  an  indi- 
vidual equally  merciless  to  himself  and  to  others.  It  is 
a  restlessly  intolerant  and  muscular  individualism  which 
despises  its  own  sufferings,  an  idealism  without  any  ideal 
world  of  truth,  a  religion  without  a  faith,  a  martyrdom 
without  prospect  of  a  paradise.  But  this  individualism 
of  the  storm  and  stress,  of  the  classical  and  of  the  ro- 
mantic periods  of  German  literature  was  always,  in  the 
first  instance,  an  emotional  rather  than  what  one  might 
call  a  motor  individualism ;  and  it  had  great  faith  in  its 
own  discoveries  of  ideal  truths.  Its  excesses  were  much 
more  sentimental  than  are  those  of  Nietzsche,  and  it 
usually  had  a  religious  faith,  unorthodox  but  glowing. 
It  might  be  rebellious ;  it  might  even  undertake,  in  ideal 
forms,  world-destroying  revolutionary  enterprises.  But 
it  never  really  despised  its  own  affairs  of  the  heart,  as 

68 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
Nietzsche  proudly  despises  his  own  emotional  illusions. 
On  the  contrary,  the  individualism  of  that  time  always 
sought  great  heart  experiences,  and  generally  believed 
in  them,  whereas,  in  our  day,  individualism  loves  to  as- 
sume a  more  drastic  and  contemptuous  tone,  where  the 
interests  of  the  heart  are  concerned.  When  German  indi- 
vidualism, in  those  romantic  old  days,  was  philosophical 
and  reflective,  it  might  be  highly  critical;  but  it  was 
withal,  in  the  end,  either  fantastically  or  even  laboriously 
constructive,  rather  than  mainly  iconoclastic,  whereas 
our  extreme  individualists  are  fond  of  making,  as  it  were, 
pyramids  of  the  skulls  of  their  enemies.  Individualism 
is  indeed  always  strongly  negative,  but  the  individualism 
of  that  time  had  its  hearty  positive  enthusiasms,  and 
often  hugged  its  very  illusions.  It  destroyed,  but  it  was 
fond  also  of  building  its  own  temples,  which  were  often 
indeed  rather  too  much  in  the  air. 

As  for  the  other  topic  of  that  time,  the  ideal  world, 
that  of  course  has  often  attracted  the  eager  interest  of 
the  cultivated  minds  of  mankind.  The  ideal  world  for  the 
German  thinkers  of  those  days  differed  from  that  of 
Plato,  as  well  as  from  that  of  mediaeval  tradition.  This 
new  realm  of  the  ideal  was  first  of  all  a  region  where 
great  ethical  interests  were  prominent,  but  these  interests 
had  modern  forms,  determined  by  the  social  struggles 
of  the  age.  Freedom,  the  ideal  social  order  of  modern 
society,  the  ideals  of  beauty  suggested  by  the  newer 
romantic  poetry — these  were  among  the  notable  prob- 
lems of  this  time.  So  far  as  one  went  beyond  the  in- 
dividual, the  mysterious  linkage  of  the  self  to  other 
selves  and  to  the  whole  universe  of  being,  formed  the 
central  problem  of  philosophy.  The  religious  views  of  the 
time  meanwhile  became  altered ;  and  instead  of  the  God 

69 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

of  traditional  theology,  and  also  instead  of  the  world- 
contriving  and  utilitarian  divine  being  of  the  earlier 
eighteenth  century  deism,  one  now  sought  for  the  Abso- 
lute— a  being  characterized  in  that  time  by  two  princi- 
pal attributes:  first,  that  the  Absolute  was  impersonal 
and  thus  relatively  pantheistic  in  type ;  while,  secondly, 
the  self  was  nevertheless  the  best  image  and  revelation, 
the  true  incarnation,  of  this  Absolute.  This  paradox, 
that  the  self  was  the  center  of  the  universe,  while  the  Ab- 
solute was  nevertheless  impersonal,  formed  the  crucial 
issue  of  the  time. 

II. 

I  am  thus  led  from  this  general  sketch  of  the  state  of 
German  mental  life  in  the  years  in  question,  back  to  the 
properly  philosophical  field. 

The  early  idealists,  then,  made  the  problems  of  phi- 
losophy center  about  two  principal  conceptions,  that  of 
the  self  and  that  of  the  Absolute.  We  have  seen  how 
these  thinkers,  in  so  far  as  they  were  guided  by  their 
technical  interests,  came  by  the  first  of  these  problems. 
The  Kantian  deduction  of  the  categories  had  given  this 
problem  of  the  self  its  new  form,  and  had  done  so  by 
emphasizing  the  fact  that  all  phenomena  (and  phenom- 
ena, alone,  according  to  Kant,  are  knowable)  are  inev- 
itably moulded  in  their  form  by  the  conditions  which  are 
imposed  upon  them  by  the  self  in  order  that  they  may 
become  known  to  this  self.  As  soon,  however,  as  thinkers 
had  undertaken  to  look  closer  into  Kant's  problem,  to 
see  why  the  self  has  these  categories,  and  no  others, 
and  to  understand  how  the  self  imposes  these  categories 
upon  the  data  of  sense,  it  had  become  obvious  that 
Kant's  account  of  the  matter  was  incomplete.  The  self 
remained  even  for  Kant  a  problem.  Kant's  own  emphasis', 

70 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
in  his  later  writings,  upon  the  ethical  aspects  of  the  self, 
still  further  made  it  necessary  to  understand  where  the 
basis  and  the  true  unity  of  self-consciousness  lies.  And 
when  the  philosophers  further  attacked  this  problem  of 
the  self,  their  interest  was  intensified  by  the  whole  spirit 
of  an  age  which,  as  we  have  now  seen,  believed  in  the 
self,  believed  in  individuality,  gloried  in  the  inner  life. 
We  have  now  also  seen  why  the  other  problem — the 
problem  of  the  Absolute — was  almost  equally  emphasized 
by  the  interests  of  that  day.  Whatever  the  true  self  is, 
its  nature  is  hidden,  at  least  from  our  ordinary  knowl- 
edge, in  the  depths  of  unconsciousness.  Only  when  we 
learn  to  reflect  can  we  hope  to  penetrate  any  of  its  deeper 
mysteries.  But  when  we  reflect,  we  at  once  bring  to  light 
a  new  question,  the  question  of  the  relations  between  the 
practical  and  the  theoretical  life  of  the  self.  The  two 
expressions  of  self -consciousness,  "I  know,"  and  "I 
do,"  stand,  in  Kant's  account,  in  a  profoundly  baffling 
relation.  The  unity  can  here  be  found  only  through  some 
principle  which  Kant  left  still  undiscovered.  Closely  con- 
nected with  this  problem  is  another  which  Kant  indeed 
touches  but  only  to  leave  it  for  his  successors  to  develop. 
This  problem  is  furnished  by  the  relations  amongst  the 
many  selves.  That  they  possess  a  common  nature,  is 
implied  in  every  step  of  Kant's  discussion  of  the  human 
intellect.  How  this  common  nature  is  to  be  further 
defined,  this  matter  Kant  treats  with  a  careful  reticence. 
What  indications  he  gives  are  paradoxically  baffling. 
Kant's  ideal  moral  world  of  rational  agents — the  object 
of  what  he  defines  as  our  well-warranted  faith — is  a 
realm  of  ethical  autonomy,  a  kingdom  of  free  selves,  a 
distinctly  pluralistic  community,  as  Professor  Howison 
has,  with  historical  accuracy,  insisted.  The  virtual  self 

71 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
of  the  deduction  of  the  categories,  however,  is  a  princi- 
ple whose  unity  determines  the  mutual  relations  of  all 
possible  human  experiences,  and  whose  universality 
defines  the  sense  in  which  empirical  judgments  are  valid 
for  all  men.  If  you  give  to  this  principle  any  further 
definition  than  Kant  had  given  it,  the  unity  of  this  true 
ego  invites  a  monistic  formulation.  Kant  has  no  reason 
to  decide  between  such  a  monism  and  his  ethical  plural- 
ism. The  one  is  a  concept  of  his  theory  of  knowledge,  the 
other  of  his  ethics.  And  ultimate  truth  we  cannot  know. 
His  judgment  in  these  matters  is  theoretically  suspended. 
But  for  his  idealistic  successors  such  deliberate  suspen- 
sion of  judgment  proved  impossible.  We  thus  begin  to 
see  why,  in  view  of  the  conflict  between  the  unity  of  the 
world  of  truth  and  the  pluralism  of  the  world  of  action, 
these  idealists  were  led  to  seek  a  solution  in  terms  of  the 
conception  of  an  impersonal  Absolute,  which  is  never- 
theless the  ground  and  the  source  of  personality. 

It  would  of  course  be  inaccurate  to  ascribe  to  the 
concept  of  the  Absolute  as  these  men  formed  it  the  sole 
office  of  accounting  for  the  relations  of  various  selves. 
Unquestionably  the  magnitude  of  the  social  movements 
of  those  times,  the  vast  changes  of  civilization  that  were 
then  under  way,  the  elemental  passions  that  were  then 
set  free,  the  sense  of  an  overwhelming  fate,  predeter- 
mining human  affairs — all  these  things  influenced  the 
philosophers  in  their  conception  of  the  Absolute.  In 
sharp  contrast  to  the  individualism  of  the  revolution- 
ary period,  stood  the  fact  of  the  blind  power  of  the  mob, 
which  the  Revolution  had  for  a  while  so  impressively 
demonstrated.  The  general  awakening  of  the  peoples, 
viewed  as  great  masses,  was  as  notable  a  fact  of  the  age 
as  was  the  importance  of  the  heroes  of  the  day.  Napoleon, 

72 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 

when  he  came,  seemed  to  his  admirers  less  a  mere  individ- 
ual than  the  incarnation  of  some  demonic  spirit  of  a 
whole  nation's  life.  The  hackneyed  story  relates  how 
Hegel,  who  one  day  saw  Napoleon  for  a  moment  after  the 
battle  of  Jena,  said  that  he  had  met  the  Weltgeist  zu 
Pferde.  In  those  days,  one  could  not  long  remain  merely 
individualistic.  The  self  was  prominent;  but  the  uni- 
verse was  impressing  upon  the  beholder,  in  a  new  way, 
its  possession  of  vast  impersonal  forces  which  used  indi- 
viduals as  their  mere  tools.  In  the  light  of  such  experi- 
ences men  began  to  read  the  philosophy  of  history  in  a 
new  way. 

Nevertheless,  something  more  than  the  social  and  his- 
torical problems  impelled  thinkers  towards  an  interpreta- 
tion of  the  world  in  terms  of  an  Absolute.  Kant's  theory 
was,  within  its  carefully  guarded  limits,  a  doctrine 
regarding  the  bases  of  our  empirical  knowledge  of  phe- 
nomena. It  was  no  theory  of  nature.  Our  understanding 
determines  forms;  it  cannot  predetermine  the  material 
that  shall  fill  these  forms.  Hence  nature  remains  to  us  a 
mystery.  "We  can  never  deduce  a  single  concrete  fact. 
Why,  for  instance,  organisms  exist  in  nature  with  the 
appearance  of  having  been  designed,  we  can  never  hope 
to  fathom  through  our  understanding.  Kant  once  more 
resolutely  suspends  his  judgments.  We  can  understand 
the  order  of  phenomena ;  we  can  never  pierce  to  the  heart 
of  things  and  find  why  they  exist. 

The  idealists  could  not  accept  this  Kantian  limitation. 
Once  they  had  disposed  of  Kant's  shadowy  and  unknow- 
able things  in  themselves,  the  problem  of  the  world 
became  for  them,  as  we  have  seen,  one  about  the  true 
nature  of  the  self.  This  problem,  however,  sent  them  far 
beneath  the  threshold  of  our  ordinary  consciousness. 

73 


LECTUKES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

Whatever  it  is  that  determines  the  experience  of  the  self, 
must  also  determine  not  only  all  of  the  forms  and  the 
relations  of  the  many  selves  but  also  the  true  basis  of 
all  the  phenomena  that  appear  to  us  as  physical  nature. 
Grant  that  the  physical  world  is  a  phenomenon,  our 
phenomenon.  Then  it  is  our  own  deeper  nature  which 
determines  this  phenomenon  to  appear  thus  foreign  to 
us,  and  ourselves  to  seem  as  if  we  were  mere  products 
of  its  mechanism.  All  experience  is  appearance  for  the 
self.  Well  then,  we  must  be  able,  if  we  reflect  rightly,  to 
discover,  not  indeed  the  reason  for  every  detail  of  the 
world,  but  at  least  the  general  reasons  why  our  experi- 
ence presents  to  us  here  the  organic  and  there  the  inor- 
ganic type  of  phenomena,  here  the  growth  of  things, 
and  there  their  decay.  We  must  be  able  to  learn  why  it  is, 
and  in  what  sense,  that  the  individual  man  appears  and 
must  appear  to  us  as  a  phenomenon  amongst  phenomena, 
as  a  product  of  nature — in  brief,  why  man,  who  bears 
about  in  his  own  inmost  core  the  very  secret  of  the  uni- 
verse of  phenomena,  still  seems,  and  has  to  seem,  as  if  he 
were  the  mere  creature  of  a  day,  whom  a  mere  wound 
can  destroy,  whom  a  pestilence  can  slay.  In  sum  then, 
this  philosophy  must  undertake  to  be  a  philosophy  of 
nature,  and  to  discuss,  not  merely  the  forms  of  things, 
but  their  presentation,  source,  and  meaning. 

I  suggest  thus  in  outline  certain  of  the  main  thoughts 
of  this  philosophical  movement,  attempting  at  this  point 
neither  criticism  nor  defense  of  these  thoughts.  They 
were  at  least  a  natural  product  of  the  situation.  And  one 
sees  why  a  philosophy  which  was  equally  to  explain  our 
own  inner  as  well  as  the  basis  of  our  experience  of  outer 
nature,  was  readily  disposed  to  attempt  to  unify  its 
notions  by  means  of  an  impersonal  conception  of  the 

74 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
Absolute,  a  conception  still  to  be  kept  in  the  closest 
touch  with  the  conception  of  the  true  meaning  of  the 
self. 

In  addition  to  the  problems  of  the  self,  of  the  many 
selves,  and  of  nature,  the  philosophy  of  this  time  was 
deeply  moved  by  the  new  form  which  the  problems  of 
religion  had  inevitably  received  in  consequence  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age.  Individualism  had  broken  with  theolog- 
ical authority.  The  eighteenth  century  worship  of  rea- 
son had  long  since  rendered  rationalism  in  theology  a 
favorite  philosophical  ideal.  The  Kantian  philosophy,  in 
relegating  religion  to  the  position  of  an  indemonstrable 
ideal,  to  be  purified  into  a  simply  rational  faith  in  God, 
freedom,  and  immortality,  had  only  the  more  set  free 
the  tendency  to  reconstruct  the  contents  of  tradition  in 
accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  time.  The  new  concep- 
tion of  the  Absolute  was  thus  inevitably  developed  under 
the  influence  of  a  predisposition  in  favor  of  a  new  the- 
ology. There  is  a  profoundly  religious  motive  which,  both 
in  Hindoo  and  in  Western  thought,  has  for  thousands  of 
years  underlain  the  view  that  one  comes  into  closest  touch 
with  the  Divine,  not  without  but  within  one's  own  true 
self.  The  Hindoo  seers  and  the  Christian  mystics  had 
agreed  in  seeking  an  unity  of  the  self  and  of  the  Divine 
wherein  the  nature  of  each  is  intimately  revealed  at  the 
moment  when  they  are  nearest  together.  The  new  ideal- 
ism revived  these  ancient  thoughts  but  gave  them  its  own 
form.  What  is  at  the  heart,  at  the  root,  at  the  ground  of 
the  self,  must  be,  in  terms  of  the  philosophy  of  which 
Kant's  doctrine  had  given  such  novel  forms,  the  Abso- 
lute, the  common  root  and  ground  of  all  selfhood,  and  of 
all  nature.  This  then,  so  these  thinkers  hold,  will  be  what 
the  ancient  faith  has  meant  by  the  name  "God."  Only 

75 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
the  new  philosophy  will  be  no  merely  mystical  experi- 
ence. It  will  be  a  well-wrought  and  systematic  doctrine, 
with  a  method  of  its  own.  A  revised  and  completed  deduc- 
tion of  the  categories  shall  render  the  new  formula- 
tion of  religious  faith  compatible  with  reason.  The  tri- 
umph of  the  new  age  shall  thus  be  the  union  of  the 
"form"  of  a  new  rationalism  with  the  "matter"  of 
ancient  mysticism.  Such,  I  say,  is  in  general  the  ideal  of 
the  religious  philosophy  to  which  this  time  gave  birth. 

III. 

You  have  now  before  you  a  few  of  the  fundamental 
ideas  of  the  philosophy  of  this  period.  We  must  next 
suggest  something  regarding  the  method  of  thinking 
which  became  characteristic  of  this  philosophy.  Concern- 
ing this  method  a  great  deal  of  misunderstanding  exists 
amongst  those  who  are  not  acquainted  with  the  matter  at 
first  hand.  These  Germans,  one  says,  attempted  to  evolve 
all  things  out  of  their  inner  consciousness.  So  much,  and 
no  more,  does  one,  only  too  frequently,  know  about  what 
went  on  in  the  procedure  of  the  early  idealistic  meta- 
physicians. Those  who  thus  sum  up  the  whole  matter  are 
accustomed  to  conceive  our  idealists  merely  as  imagina- 
tive persons  who  fancied  whatever  they  pleased,  and  who 
then  hid  from  themselves  and  their  pupils  the  arbitrari- 
ness of  their  opinions  by  means  of  much  unintelligible 
phraseology.  The  one  amongst  the  greater  early  idealists 
who  gave  most  ground  for  such  an  opinion  was  Schell- 
ing,  a  genius,  but  in  his  youth  an  unprincipled  and 
voluble  genius,  who  began  to  write  with  enormous  rapid- 
ity when  he  was  twenty,  and  who  had  reached  the  cul- 
mination of  his  most  productive  period,  and  of  his  influ- 
ence, before  he  had  well  passed  thirty  years  of  age.  No 

76 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
doubt  Schelling  at  his  worst  is  indeed  an  arbitrarily 
imaginative  person ;  his  early  won  fame  intoxicated  him, 
he  lacked  due  self-criticism,  and  he  did  not  take  the 
trouble  properly  to  digest  his  large  store  of  information 
concerning  the  current  physical  science  of  his  day,  while 
he  nevertheless  attempted  to  use  this  information  for  the 
purpose  of  constructing  a  new  Philosophy  of  Nature. 
The  result  is  that  he  wrote  much  upon  this  topic  which 
remains  both  fruitless  and  unreadable.  Yet  even  in  the 
course  of  such  hasty  work,  Schelling  often  showed  a  fine 
instinct  for  essentially  important  leading  ideas  such  as 
the  science  of  his  day  was  beginning  to  develop.  Some 
few  of  his  own  leading  ideas  in  regard  to  nature  are 
of  decidedly  more  importance  than  the  first  glance 
indicates.* 

However,  it  is  no  part  of  my  task  at  this  moment  to 
discriminate  at  all  exhaustively  between  the  good  and 
the  bad  in  the  methods  of  thinking  used  here  or  there  by 
Schelling  or  by  any  other  of  the  thinkers  of  the  time. 
What  is  here  needed  is  a  broad  outline  of  the  most  novel, 
most  characteristic,  and  least  arbitrary  of  the  methods 
which  these  philosophers  gradually  developed.  This  was 
the  so-called  dialectical  or  antithetical  method.  It  meant 
much  more  than  any  purely  arbitrary  use  of  the  construc- 
tive imagination.  It  did  not  consist  of  anything  that  can 
be  fairly  described  as  an  evolving  of  the  facts  out  of 
one's  inner  consciousness,  in  so  far  as  that  phrase  sug- 
gests mere  fancifulness.  This  method,  on  the  contrary, 
had  a  certain  very  marked  exactness  of  its  own.  Used 
within  due  limits  it  will  always  remain  a  valuable  in- 

*  Cf .  the  author 's  * '  Relations  between  Philosophy  and  Science 
in  the  First  Half  of  the  Nineteenth  Century."  Science,  N.  S., 
XXXVIII,  1913,  pp.  567-584.— E0. 

77 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

strument  of  philosophical  thought.  Let  me  try  to  indi- 
cate at  this  point  the  nature  of  this  dialectical  method. 

Historically  speaking,  this  method  is  derived  from 
Socrates,  and  elaborated  in  the  Platonic  dialogues, 
especially  in  the  Parmenides,  and  to  some  extent  in  the 
Sophist,  in  the  Phcedo,  in  the  Thecetetus,  in  the  Phce- 
drus  and  elsewhere.  As  Plato  used  it,  it  often  consists  in 
developing  and  then  comparing  antithetical,  i.e.,  mu- 
tually contradictory,  doctrines,  partly  for  the  sake  of 
leading  the  way,  through  natural,  or  perhaps  inevitable, 
preliminary  errors,  to  some  truth  which  lies  beyond 
them,  and  partly  for  the  sake  of  exhibiting  a  complex 
truth  in  its  various  aspects,  by  looking  at  it  first  from 
one  side  and  then  from  another  in  order  finally  to  win 
a  combined  view  of  the  whole.  Thus,  in  the  Thecetetus, 
the  Socrates  of  the  dialogue  aims  towards  the  goal  of  a 
sound  definition  of  knowledge — a  goal  which  is  indeed 
not  reached  in  the  dialogue — by  first  setting  aside, 
through  an  elaborate  dialectical  process,  the  natural  pre- 
liminary error  of  defining  knowledge  as  sense  impres- 
sion. In  the  introduction  to  the  Republic,  false  views  of 
the  nature  of  justice  are  expounded  in  order  to  clear 
the  way  for  the  true  definition.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
the  Phcedrus  two  views  of  nature  and  the  effects  of 
love  are  set  in  antithesis  in  order  even  thereby  to  depict 
the  truth  which  justifies  both  views.  This  truth  is  that 
there  is  a  conflict  in  the  human  soul  of  the  two  na- 
tures, the  lower  and  the  higher,  and  that  hereby  our 
mortal  lives  and  our  future  destinies  are  determined. 
Love  is  a  soul-destroying  madness.  Love  is  also  a  god- 
like passion,  a  divine  madness,  whereby  we  learn  our 
true  destiny.  The  conflict  between  these  two  theses  is 
depicted,  in  this  dialogue,  as  simply  the  abstract  expres- 

78 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
sion  of  the  moral  conflict  of  life,  the  warfare  of  the 
spirit  with  the  flesh. 

In  addition  to  such  more  formal  opposition  of  thesis 
and  antithesis,  the  dialectical  process  plays,  in  Socratic 
dialogues,  the  general  part  of  moving  principle  of  the 
whole  discussion.  Through  a  constant  self-analysis  of  its 
own  defects,  our  thinking  is  led  to  what  often  appears 
in  the  dialogues  to  be  its  only  possible  mode  of  self-ex- 
pression. Without  erring,  and  transcending  our  error, 
we,  as  sometimes  suggested  by  the  Socratic  irony,  simply 
cannot  become  wise.  Such  is  human  wisdom ;  namely  the 
self -consciousness  that  observes  one's  own  forms  of  un- 
wisdom. Without  such  self-consciousness,  one  remains 
blind  in  one 's  own  conceit.  Yet  to  get  it,  one  must  err  and 
then  rise  above  the  error. 

The  thought  thus  somewhat  dimly  indicated  by  vari- 
ous Socratic  expressions  in  the  Platonic  dialogues — the 
thought  that  error  is  not  a  mere  accident  of  an  untrained 
intellect,  but  a  necessary  stage  or  feature  or  moment  of 
the  expression  of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  itself — this 
thought  is  the  very  one  which  the  idealists  of  our  period 
not  merely  admit,  but  consciously  emphasize,  and  de- 
velop in  new  forms.  Without  the  Platonic  dialogues  this 
dialectical  method  would  indeed  never  have  existed.  But 
one  cannot  say  that  our  idealists  merely  took  over  the 
old  method  and  applied  it  to  new  problems.  On  the  con- 
trary, in  the  end  they  so  revised  it  as  to  lead  them  to 
the  thesis  that  philosophical  truth  is,  as  they  gradually 
came  to  say,  essentially  dialectical,  i.e.,  you  cannot  ex- 
press the  highest  insights  except  in  the  form  of  a  series 
of  antitheses.  Although,  as  I  have  suggested,  the  Platonic 
dialogues  contain  indications  of  such  a  tendency,  Plato 's 
own  conception  of  ultimate  truth  tends  to  make  the  dia- 

79 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
lectical  process  appear  rather  an  incident  of  our  human 
life  than  a  necessity  of  the  truth  as  it  exists  in  the  pure 
realm  of  the  Ideas  themselves.  Such  evidences  as  Plato 
emphasizes  for  the  thesis  that  the  Ideas  themselves  are 
the  result  of  a  dialectical  process,  remain  undeveloped. 
These  idealists,  however,  devote  a  great  deal  of  space  to 
making  the  dialectical  aspect  of  truth  very  explicit. 

The  new  form  of  the  dialectical  method  was  also  due, 
in  part,  to  Kant's  famous  doctrine  of  the  antinomies. 
Kant  undertook  to  show  that  the  human  reason  becomes 
involved  in  conflicts  whenever  it  attempts  to  discuss  the 
beginning  of  the  world  in  time,  the  limits  of  the  world 
in  space,  the  ultimate  divisibility  or  non-divisibility  of 
matter,  the  possibility  of  the  free  initiation  of  a  series 
of  causes  and  effects,  or  the  existence  of  a  necessary 
being.  Thus  one  can  demonstrate,  with  equal  cogency, 
that  if  the  real  world  is  in  time  at  all,  it  must  have  had 
a  beginning,  yet  cannot  have  had  a  beginning.  If  the 
real  world  is  in  space,  it  must  be  limited,  and  with  equal 
cogency  can  be  proved  to  be  unlimited ;  and  so  on.  Kant 
states  these  antinomies  and  the  argument  for  both  theses 
and  antitheses  and  then  shows  that  the  solution  depends 
upon  distinguishing  between  the  world  of  things  in 
themselves  and  the  world  of  phenomena.  Kant's  solu- 
tion need  not  here  further  concern  us.  We  know  that  it 
could  not  content  our  idealists,  who  did  not  admit  the 
validity  of  the  Kantian  distinction  here  in  question.  But 
the  fact  that  Kant  declared  the  appearance  of  these  an- 
titheses to  be  essential  to  the  very  life  of  the  human 
reason,  so  that  the  reason,  according  to  him,  always  ex- 
presses itself  in  these  antithetical  demands  upon  our 
conceptual  powers,  was  of  more  importance  for  the  ideal- 
ists. For  them  the  question  consequently  tends  to  take 

80 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
this  form :  Whatever  the  solution  of  any  antinomy,  why 
do  such  antinomies,  real  or  apparent,  arise  in  our  minds 
at  all  ?  Why  do  we  not  come  at  the  truth  directly,  or  else, 
if  ignorance  besets  us,  why  do  we  not  become  directly, 
or  through  our  mere  failures  to  get  light,  conscious  of 
our  ignorance?  Why  are  there  regions  of  our  thinking 
where  conflicting  judgments  appear  to  us  to  possess  an 
equally  cogent  evidence,  so  that  it  is  to  us  as  if  both  a 
thesis  and  an  antithesis  were  positively  true? 

No  one  could  be  interested  in  such  a  question  unless 
he  had  cases  of  apparently  dialectical  or  antithetical 
thinking  prominently  before  his  mind,  and  unless  such 
instances  seemed  to  him  no  results  of  merely  accidental 
or  easily  avoidable  blunders.  The  idealists  actually  be- 
lieved themselves  to  be  in  possession  of  such  notable 
cases.  Moreover  they  came  to  regard  such  cases  as  char- 
acteristic of  philosophical  thought,  and,  in  fact,  of  phil- 
osophical truth.  Still  holding  ourselves  free  from  any 
prejudgment  of  the  merits  of  this  view  of  philosophical 
truth,  let  us  now  endeavor  merely  to  illustrate  some  of 
the  forms  of  the  dialectical  method. 

For  the  first  class  of  illustrations  one  may  again  turn 
to  the  problems  which  the  spirit  of  that  time  furnished 
to  the  idealists.  Whatever  else  the  age  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  following  Napoleonic  period  were,  they  were 
such  as  to  suggest  that  the  dialectical,  the  antithetical, 
the  contradictory  occurrences  in  our  thinking  are 
founded  on  tendencies  very  deep  in  human  nature.  It  was 
not  the  mere  blundering  of  the  individual  men  of  those 
days  which  led  to  rapid  and  contradictory  changes  of 
popular  opinion  and  of  social  action;  for  instance,  the 
practical  expression  of  the  abstract  doctrine  of  the  rights 
of  men  led  to  a  social  situation  in  which  the  rights  of  the 

81 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

victims  of  the  Terror  were  so  ruthlessly  sacrificed;  the 
propaganda  of  universal  human  freedom  was  sustained 
by  bloody  wars ;  and  in  the  end,  the  outcome  of  the  Revo- 
lution was  a  military  despotism.  It  is  hardly  a  very  deep 
account  of  these  processes  to  say  simply  that  the  pendu- 
lum swings,  and  that  excessive  action  leads  to  reaction. 
This  is  true.  But  it  is  a  deeper  truth  that  the  ideas  and 
passions  of  such  a  time  are  in  their  nature  an  union  of 
antithetical  tendencies.  The  passion  for  human  liberty, 
in  the  form  which  it  took  during  the  early  French  Revo- 
lution was  obviously  an  example  of  what  Nietzsche  has 
called  the  Wille  zur  Macht.  Whatever  the  causes  of  the 
French  Revolution,  when  it  came  it  awakened  a  love  of 
human  freedom  which  was  also  a  love  of  human  might. 
The  two  aspects  of  this  great  fondness  were  antithetical, 
and  for  the  moment  inseparable.  As  the  process  devel- 
oped they  contended,  and  the  one  contradicted  the  other. 
How  could  one  express  one's  regard  for  human  freedom 
except  through  one 's  might  ?  But  might  can  be  expressed 
only  through  finding  some  one  to  conquer.  Conquest 
depends  upon  discipline ;  discipline  requires  a  ruler. 

Of  course  this  obvious  instance  of  the  revolutionary 
tendencies  awakened  the  reflections  of  our  philosophers. 
But  the  instance  did  not  stand  alone.  All  the  greater 
emotions  are  dialectical.  The  tragedies  of  the  storm  and 
stress  period,  and  of  the  classical  and  romantic  litera- 
ture, are  portrayals  of  this  contradictory  logic  of  pas- 
sion. Faust  asks  the  highest,  and  therefore  contracts 
with  the  devil  and  destroys  Margaret.  The  romantic 
poets  so  loved  emotion  that  their  works  are  mainly  de- 
voted to  depicting  the  vanity  of  all  the  emotions.  Outside 
of  German  literature,  and  in  later  times,  one  finds  nu- 
merous instances  of  similar  literary  expressions  of  the 

82 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
dialectics  of  the  emotions.  The  fascination  and  the  power 
of  Byron  are  due  to  his  contradictions.  Because  of  the 
loftiness  of  his  emotional  demands  upon  life,  he  finds 
only  triviality  and  failure.  His  most  characteristic  ideal 
remains  such  a  being  as  Manfred,  whom  the  demons  re- 
spect solely  because  his  sins  are  deeper  than  theirs  and 
because  his  internal  remorse  makes  the  external  penal- 
ties of  their  hell  seem  by  comparison  insignificant.  Man- 
fred's poetic  dignity  consists  in  his  absolute  conscious- 
ness of  his  own  moral  worthlessness  in  all  matters  except 
his  honest  self-condemnation.  Others  are  deluded  into 
hope  or  fear.  He  knows  that  there  is  nothing  to  lose; 
and  this  makes  him  a  hero.  Instances  of  the  dialectics 
of  the  emotions  abound  in  the  European  literature  of  the 
period  between  1770  and  1830.  And  not  all  such  in- 
stances are  tragic.  There  is  a  glory  in  winning  all  by 
abandoning  all.  Wilhelm  Meister,  like  Saul,  sets  out  to 
seek  asses,  and  finds  a  kingdom.  Or,  as  the  classic  lyric 
puts  the  cheerful  aspect  of  this  same  dialectic: 

"  Ich  hab'  mein'  Sach'  auf  Nichts  gestellt 
Und  mein  gehort  die  ganze  Welt." 

It  is  easy  to  say  that  all  such  phenomena  express  pre- 
cisely the  unreasonableness  of  the  emotions.  But  a  closer 
view  shows  that  this  dialectical  tendency  belongs  rather 
to  the  active  will  than  to  the  mere  emotions.  Upon  this 
both  Hegel  and  his  bitter  enemy  Schopenhauer,  though 
in  very  different  ways,  are  agreed,  and  upon  this  they 
both  insist.  The  mere  sentimentalists  amongst  the  ro- 
mantic poets  express  such  crises  and  such  changes  of 
point  of  view  less  effectively  than  do  the  more  active  na- 
tures. Byron  is  by  nature  a  man  of  action  who  fails  to 
find  an  absorbing  career  until  he  writes  his  last  lyric 

83 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
after  landing  in  Greece.  That  is  why  his  utmost  cyni- 
cism or  his  profoundest  gloom  has  always  a  note  of  man- 
liness about  it  that  holds  one's  attention.  To  turn  in  the 
other  direction,  Goethe,  full  of  emotional  experience  as 
he  was,  is  rather  a  restlessly  active  man  than  a  man  of 
mere  feeling.  The  dialectical  process  of  his  own  activity 
brought  him  indeed  to  that  splendid  consciousness  of 
calm  and  of  inner  self-possession  which  marked  his  best 
years ;  but  his  processes  are  always  those  not  of  the  man 
of  merely  changing  sentiments  but  rather  of  the  man 
who  became  the  controller  of  his  fortunes,  the  master  of 
his  deeds. 

Development  through  contradictions  belongs  then  to 
the  will,  using  that  word  in  its  merely  popular  sense, 
rather  than  to  the  relatively  passive  emotions.  Can  one 
still  say  that  all  such  processes,  whether  of  the  emotions 
or  of  the  will,  belong  ipso  facto  to  the  relatively  irrational 
side  of  life  ?  I  will  not  at  this  moment  answer  this  ques- 
tion upon  its  merits.  It  is  enough  for  my  present  pur- 
pose to  say  that  the  idealists,  whose  position  I  am 
here  merely  illustrating,  insist  that  this  is  not  the  case. 
They  insist  that  the  law  of  development  through  antith- 
eses is  characteristic  not  merely  of  the  feelings,  nor 
yet  merely  of  what  is  unreasonable  about  our  feelings 
and  our  will,  but  of  the  very  life  of  reason  itself.  I  have 
used  the  foregoing  illustrations  in  order  to  show  how 
deeply  seated  the  dialectical  or  antithetical  tendencies 
were  in  the  life  and  in  the  literature  of  that  age.  The 
philosophy  of  our  idealists  was  a  reflection  of  the  spirit 
of  that  time.  Whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  these  idealists 
did  not  seek  to  philosophize  by  merely  purging  their 
thoughts  of  all  such  antithetical  tendencies,  or  by  dem- 
onstrating that  a  sound  thinker  defines  just  one  solid 

84 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE 
and  stable  truth  such  as  enables  you  to  ignore,  once  for 
all,  every  contradiction  as  a  mere  blunder.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  developed  a  method  which  depends  upon  rec- 
ognizing that  the  truth  is  a  synthesis  of  antithetical 
moments  or  aspects,  which  does  not  ignore  but  unifies 
opposition. 

This  notion  of  truth  is  to  many  people  so  unsympa- 
thetic that  I  can  only  hope,  at  the  moment,  to  indicate 
some  way  in  which  one  who  approaches  it  for  the  first 
time  may  be  aided  in  treating  fairly  a  point  of  view 
which  only  our  later  illustrations  can  render  even  tol- 
erably articulate.  One  is  tempted  to  say,  "  Fickle  emotions 
we  know,  contradictory  attitudes  of  will  we  know,  but 
the  hypothesis  of  an  essentially  antithetical  constitution 
of  rational  truth  is  a  self-confessed  absurdity.  Something 
must  be  true.  What  is  true  excludes  what  is  not  true. 
Antithesis  may  arise,  through  our  ignorance  and  our 
hastiness,  on  the  way  towards  truth.  Conflicting  hypoth- 
eses may  even  wisely  be  formed,  weighed,  tested,  as  a 
means  to  the  discovery  of  truth.  But  an  antithetical  or 
dialectical  constitution  of  the  truth  is  logically  im- 
possible. ' ' 

I  will  not  here  undertake  to  answer  this  objection. 
I  am  only  trying  to  smooth  the  way  towards  an  histori- 
cal appreciation  of  this  idealistic  movement ;  so  I  may  as 
well  point  out  a  motive  which  may  help  to  make  the  dia- 
lectical method  comprehensible  to  students  of  contem- 
porary philosophy.  Our  idealists  were,  one  and  all,  in  a 
very  genuine  sense  what  people  now  call  pragmatists. 
They  were  also,  to  be  sure,  absolutists;  and  nowadays 
absolutism  is  supposed  to  be  peculiarly  abhorrent  to 
pragmatists.  But  of  the  historical,  and  perhaps  also  of 
the  logical  relations  of  pragmatism  to  absolutism  we 

85 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
shall  see  more  hereafter.  What  I  now  emphasize  is  that  all 
these  thinkers  make  much  of  the  relation  of  truth  to  ac- 
tion, to  practice,  to  the  will.  Nothing  is  true,  for  them, 
unless  therein  the  sense,  the  purpose,  the  meaning  of 
some  active  process  is  carried  out,  expressed,  accom- 

/'  plished.  Truth  is  not  for  these  post-Kantian  idealists 
something  dead  and  settled  apart  from  action.  It  is  a 
construction,  a  process,  an  activity,  a  creation,  an  attain- 
ment. Im  Anfang  war  die  That.  It  is  true,  as  I  have  said, 
that  on  the  religious  side  these  idealists  had  a  certain 
sympathy  with  the  tradition  of  the  mystics  whose  God 
was  found  through  an  interior  illumination.  But  I  also 
said  that  the  new  doctrine  was  never  meant  to  be  any 
mere  revival  of  mysticism.  I  tried  to  suggest  its  spirit 

;  by  calling  its  religion  a  synthesis  of  mystical  and  of  ra- 
tionalistic motives.  What  I  now  add  is  that  these  ration- 
alistic motives  were  dialectical,  largely  because  of  the 
stress  that  these  thinkers  laid  upon  the  active  element 
in  thought,  in  truth,  and  in  reality. 

The  connection  between  what  I  have  called  the  prag- 
matism of  these  thinkers  and  their  dialectical  method 
was  the  same  as  the  connection  already  indicated,  in  our 
illustrations  of  the  general  tendencies  of  the  time,  when 
we  pointed  out  how  the  life  of  the  will  itself  involves  the 
presence  of  antitheses  and  of  conflicting  motives.  If 
truth  is  what  some  active  process  finds,  but  finds  only 
because  this  very  activity  itself  creates  the  truth,  then 
truth  will  not  be  something  that  you  can  merely  describe 
in  terms  of  monotonous  consistency  but  will  partake 
of  the  conflicting  motives  upon  which  the  will  depends. 
This  thought  lies  very  deep  in  the  whole  philosophy  of 
this  age.  How  this  thought  is  expressed,  our  later  illus- 
trations will  show. 

86 


LECTURE  IV. 
THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING. 

THOSE  indications  of  the  general  nature  of  the 
dialectical  or  antithetical  method  of  philosophiz- 
ing with  which  the  last  lecture  closed  were 
intended  to  prepare  us  for  a  closer  contact  with  the 
thinking  processes  characteristic  of  early  post-Kantian 
idealism.  Now  I  am  to  go  on  to  some  illustrations  of  this 
method,  derived  from  the  authors  whom  we  are  studying. 
My  principal  illustrations  I  shall  choose,  in  this  and  in 
the  next  lecture,  from  one  of  the  works  of  Schelling.  Be- 
fore doing  so,  however,  I  must  consider  a  few  prelimi- 
nary and  more  general  instances,  in  order  to  help  us  to 
a  general  view  of  the  philosophical  situation  as  our  ideal- 
ists found  and  defined  it. 

I. 

So  far  in  these  discussions,  we  have  insisted  on  two 
aspects  of  the  post-Kantian  idealism.  The  first  aspect  we 
defined  by  saying  that  while  this  whole  movement  of 
thought  was  indeed  a  product  of  the  general  spirit  of 
that  revolutionary  and  romantic  age,  the  idealistic  phi- 
losophy derives  its  principal  technical  problem  from 
Kant's  deduction  of  the  categories.  The  problem  thus 
set  was  that  of  the  relation  both  of  the  form,  and,  in  a 
certain  sense,  of  the  material  data  of  human  experience 
to  the  self  and  the  selves  whose  experience  this  is.  This 

87 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
general  problem  of  the  self,  as  we  saw,  inevitably  in- 
volved the  more  special  problems  which  concern  the  re- 
lations of  the  many  human  selves  to  one  another,  to  the 
world  of  physical  phenomena,  and  to  the  Absolute,  as 
well  as  the  connected  problem  of  the  mutual  relation  of 
the  theoretical  and  the  practical  activities  of  the  self. 
The  second  aspect  of  post-Kantian  philosophy  upon 
which  we  have  dealt  is  the  method  of  thinking  which 
characterizes  these  inquirers.  This  was  the  antithetical  or 
dialectical  method.  This  method,  as  these  thinkers  employ 
it,  is  deliberately  intended,  not  as  a  merely. pedagogical 
device  to  lead  an  inquirer  through  preliminary  errors 
to  the  final  truth,  but  as  a  means  of  showing  that  the 
final  truth  itself  is  essentially  dialetical  or  antithetical 
in  its  inmost  constitution;  so  that  you  cannot  utter  a 
philosophical  verity  without  giving  it  the  form  of  an 
union  or  synthesis  of  explicitly  opposed  aspects  or 
moments. 

In  order  to  suggest  that  so  paradoxical  a  view  of  the 
nature  of  truth  may  after  all  possess  a  certain  plausibil- 
ity, I  ventured  in  the  last  lecture  to  assert  that  our 
idealists  were,  upon  the  dialectical  side  of  their  thinking, 
essentially  pragmatists,  who  regarded  truth  as  always 
the  outcome  of  a  process  or  even  as  identical  with  a  proc- 
ess, while  the  type  of  this  process,  to  their  minds,  is 
that  of  our  practical  activity.  And  as  I  also  suggested, 
the  will,  the  practical  activity  of  us  all,  is  full  of  anti- 
thetical and  so  of  dialectical  characters.  It  is  easy  to 
illustrate  this  tendency  empirically  if  you  look  at  com- 
monplace facts  of  active  life.  The  will  aims  at  content- 
ment, yet  in  all  active  people  it  is  restless  in  its  tedium 
as  soon  as  it  reaches  any  stage  of  life  where  there  is 
nothing  to  do.  The  will  demands  freedom  from  restraint, 

88 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
yet  equally  demands  its  expression  in  a  social  life 
which  is  full  of  restraints.  It  asserts  itself  in  all  sorts 
of  self-surrendering,  self-entangling,  self-disappointing 
ways.  The  proud  will  of  the  vain  man  seeks  with  helpless 
dependence  admirers  and  flatterers.  The  contrite  will  of 
the  repentant  sinner  makes  an  ideal  of  despising  itself, 
but  may  soon  become,  for  that  very  reason,  vain  of  its 
own  humility,  and  then  proudly  wears,  perhaps,  a  much 
prized  professional  ornament,  the  outward  bearing  or 
the  dress  that  intrusively  expresses  to  all  beholders  the 
fact  of  its  self-effacement.  The  will  of  the  people  seeks 
freedom,  and  therefore  accepts  ere  long  the  rule  of  des- 
pots or,  in  our  age  and  land,  the  rule  of  the  "bosses." 
Against  such  despots  it  in  time  revolts,  and  through  this 
very  revolt  undertakes,  not  to  obtain  mere  freedom,  not 
the  mere  taking  of  a  city  by  armed  attack,  but  the 
hardest  and  most  galling  of  all  tasks,  viz.,  the  task  of 
ruling  the  spirit,  which  the  popular  will,  amongst  us,  has 
BO  far  only  partially  learned  to  do.  In  brief,  whatever 
the  human  will  logically  ought  to  be,  it  is  in  fact  ex- 
tremely prone  to  contradictions,  not  only  on  its  lower 
but  on  its  higher  levels.  When  some  men  maintain  that 
contradictory  motives  and  deeds  are  naturally  character- 
istic merely  of  womankind,  this  judgment  only  shows  a 
lack  of  reflection.  The  antithetical  expression  of  the  will, 
viewed  as  a  merely  natural  tendency,  is  neither  manly 
nor  womanly ;  it  is  human.  Some  people,  to  be  sure,  have, 
like  Gladstone,  more  phrases  than  have  others  whereby 
to  explain  away  their  own  natural  contradictions  of  plan 
and  of  conduct.  I  intend  no  impertinence  when  I  here 
add  that  the  "strenuous  life"  even  on  its  highest  levels 
generally  shows  very  marked  and  significant  antitheses. 
This  being  the  case,  we  saw,  in  the  last  lecture,  that  a 

89 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

philosophy  which  views  the  truth  rather  as  something  ex- 
pressed in  an  active  process  than  as  a  fixed  realm  of  ab- 
stract principles  or  as  a  world  of  'lifeless  things  in 
themselves,  may  be  expected  to  make  the  most  of  the 
antithetical  logic  of  the  will  in  defining  its  own  theory  of 
the  universe. 

II. 

Coming  nearer  to  what  is  properly  the  foundation  of 
the  early  idealistic  philosophy,  we  may  next  point  out 
that  for  these  idealists,  as  already  indicated,  the  self  is  to 
be  the  principle  of  philosophy.  And  the  whole  idealistic 
theory  of  self-consciousness  turns  upon  the  observation 
that  the  self  is  essentially  a  dialectical,  an  antithetical 
being,  whose  nature  you  can  only  conceive  as  an  union 
of  opposing,  or  as  these  thinkers  often  assert,  of  mutually 
contradictory  tendencies. 

This  thesis  was  strongly  suggested  by  Kant's  deduc- 
tion itself,  although  Kant  avoids  directly  asserting  it, 
owing  to  his  elaborate  training  in  holding  his  judgment 
suspended.  He  cannot  tell  what  the  self  is.  He  refuses  to 
commit  himself  upon  the  topic.  Had  he  permitted  him- 
self to  express  more  explicitly  what  his  discussion  im- 
plied, the  antithetical  character  of  the  self  would  have 
come  more  fully  to  light.  Let  us  consider  some  of  the 
antitheses  implied  in  Kant's  deduction.  All  experience, 
according  to  Kant,  is  for  the  self,  and  receives  its  form 
from  the  active  application  of  the  categories  of  the  self. 
Yet  the  entire  material  of  experience — material  with- 
out which  these  forms  would  be  entirely  empty— is  not 
due  to  the  self,  but  is  a  datum  of  sense,  passively  re- 
ceived, and  so  far  is  whatever  it  chances  to  be.  Moreover, 
the  self  in  our  ordinary  life  as  observers  of  nature  is 
surely  not  conscious  from  moment  to  moment  of  the  way 

90 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
in  which  this  its  own  activity  gives  form  to  the  matter 
of  experience.  If  it  were  thus  conscious  of  how  its  cate- 
gories get  into  experience,  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason 
would  be  superfluous  instruction.  The  self  is  primarily 
unconscious  of  even  those  most  necessary  deeds  whereby 
it  becomes  an  informing  principle  to  which  is  due  the 
form  of  all  objective  phenomena  and  their  submission  to 
intelligible  laws.  The  self  seems  to  us  from  moment  to 
moment  merely  to  find  as  datum  what  in  truth  is  its 
own  deed.  Largely  unconscious  of  its  own  life,  then,  is 
the  self.  Yet  it  is  known  to  us,  on  the  purely  theoretical 
side,  solely  as  the  knower,  as  the  subject  of  conscious- 
ness. Its  first  office  is  that  of  the  knower;  but  its  life  is 
largely  that  of  unconsciousness.  Since  experience  is  one, 
this  subject,  of  consciousness  must  be  one.  Another 
man's  objective  experience  is  indeed  valid  for  me;  never- 
theless nothing  appears  to  be  more  completely  cut  off 
and  secreted  from  my  knowledge  than  is  any  direct  ex- 
perience of  what  the  contents  of  my  neighbor's  experi- 
ence may  be.  We,  the  many  men,  are  constructively  one 
in  our  experience ;  yet,  as  phenomena,  we  are  hopelessly 
apart,  and  our  consciousnesses  never  flow  into  one. 
Finally,  as  we  saw  before,  all  human  knowledge  is  of 
the  empirical ;  yet  the  very  conception  of  human  experi- 
ence is  itself  not  an  empirical  concept.  Nevertheless  we 
are  somehow  to  know  that  this  concept  has  truth. 

Meanwhile  the  self,  as  we  just  said,  is  known  to  us 
as  the  one  knower  of  experience.  But  whatever  we  con- 
cretely know,  becomes,  by  virtue  of  an  application  of 
categories  to  sense  facts,  an  object  of  experience,  a  phe- 
nomenon somewhere  in  time  and  in  space.  So  soon  as 
we  try  to  know  the  self,  it  also  becomes  one  of  the  phe- 
nomena, an  empirical  ego,  the  mere  "me"  of  ordinary 

91 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
life.  This  empirical  ego,  however,  is  simply  not  the  true 
subject,  the  knower,  whose  unity  of  experience  is  a  priori 
and  necessary.  For  space,  time,  the  categories — yes,  all 
the  world  of  phenomena,  are  in  and  of  the  self  in  so  far 
as  we  are  all  the  one  subject.  We — we  as  men,  as  various 
phenomena,  as  objects — are  scattered  about  in  our  own 
forms  of  space  and  time,  the  prey  of  the  natural  laws 
that  our  transcendental  unity  of  apperception  predeter- 
mines. The  self,  as  knower,  categorizes  all  phenomena  so 
that,  for  instance,  the  law  of  gravitation  holds.  Yet  the 
empirical  "me,"  the  psycho-physical  organism,  falls,  if 
that  so  chances,  as  helplessly  out  of  the  window  as  if  his 
own  understanding  were  not,  according  to  Kant,  the 
transcendental  source  of  the  form,  and  so  of  the  laws,  of 
all  nature,  including  the  laws  which  are  exemplified  by 
his  own  fall.  Moreover,  while  the  empirical  ego  is  thus 
helplessly  tumbling  out  of  the  phenomenal  window,  we 
may  remark,  regarding  its  correlate,  the  knower,  that 
while  that  true  self,  the  knower,  is,  we  can  speak  of  it  in 
no  objective  terms,  as  a  real  fact,  without  applying  cate- 
gories to  it;  yet  we  know  that  such  categories  are  inap- 
plicable, since  categories  apply  only  to  phenomena,  and 
no  phenomenon  is  the  self  that  knows  phenomena. 
Finally,  the  self  is  presupposed  by  us  as  a  virtual  or 
transcendental  subject.  Yet  we  can  assign  no  final  truth 
to  the  concept  of  the  self  regarding  it  as  more  than  a 
merely  virtual  unity.  And  all  these  problems  refer 
simply  to  the  theoretical  aspect  of  the  case.  The  problems 
about  the  practical  ego  are  left  out  of  sight  in  this 
enumeration. 

Thus  the  Kantian  deduction  introduces  us  to  a 
richly  dialectical  realm.  Nothing,  of  course,  is  easier 
than  for  one  who  listens  to  a  sketch  of  these  paradoxes 

92 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
to  dispose  of  the  whole  subject,  in  his  own  mind,  by 
simply  saying,  "What  nonsense  philosophers  can  utter," 
and  then  passing  on  to  the  order  of  his  own  day. 
That  is  indeed  simple  enough.  Unfortunately  one  who 
thus  disposes  of  the  matter  fails  to  note  that  he  cannot 
attempt  to  articulate  the  common  sense  doctrines  which 
bear  upon  these  same  topics  of  the  self  and  its  realm 
of  knowledge  without  passing  through  a  series  of  anti- 
thetical propositions  which  are  quite  as  numerous  and 
quite  as  paradoxical  as  those  which  Kant's  deduction 
brings  to  the  notice  of  a  reflective  mind.  The  difference 
between  common  sense  and  the  philosophical  doctrine  is 
simply  that  the  philosopher,  by  his  finer  analysis,  re- 
veals the  paradoxes  which  our  everyday  consciousness 
veils  by  means  of  a  more  or  less  thoughtless  traditional 
phraseology.  The  philosopher  is  more  frank  with  his  an- 
titheses. He  does  not  invent  the  paradoxes ;  he  confesses 
them.  Common  sense  pretends  to  be  free  from  these  con- 
tradictions; but  its  freedom  consists  in  a  mere  refusal 
to  reflect.  The  behavior  of  common  sense  much  resembles 
that  of  the  smooth-tongued  and  obtuse  man,  who  con- 
fidently accuses  womankind  of  a  peculiar  tendency  to 
contradictions,  without  confessing  that  his  own  practi- 
cal attitude  towards  all  womankind  is,  as  is  usually  the 
case,  a  very  nest  of  somewhat  portentous  contradictions. 
As  a  fact,  the  problems  of  Kant's  deduction  are  the 
problems  of  all  of  us.  We  all  naturally  insist  that  ex- 
perience is  our  guide ;  yet  we  transcend  our  own  literal 
experience  with  every  assertion  that  we  make,  as  for 
instance  when  we  assert  that  other  men  exist  and  have 
experience.  We  all  naturally  regard  ourselves  and  all 
our  ideas,  as  a  mere  by-product  of  organic  processes, 
and  as  the  sport  of  physical  fortunes;  yet  we  persist 

93 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
that  the  real  world  is  such  as  to  be  subjected,  in  some 
sense,  to  the  laws  of  our  reason,  so  that  the  more  our  in- 
sight possesses  inner  and  reasonable  clearness,  the  more 
it  seems  to  us  likely  to  be  true  beyond  ourselves.  In  brief, 
we  insist  that  the  world  is  independent  of  our  ideas; 
and  yet  we  are  always  dealing,  when  we  try  to  know, 
merely  with  a  choice  of  the  ideal  attitudes  of  our  own 
consciousness.  To  other  men  we  frequently  say,  "The 
fact  is  thus  and  so,  no  matter  what  you  think."  And 
that  seems  to  us  the  correct  way  of  defining  reality.  But 
for  ourselves  we  often  say,  "Since  7  cannot  think  it 
otherwise,  it  must  be  so."  And  that  seems  to  us  equally 
a  correct  expression  of  our  relations  to  reality.  Yet 
withal,  we  despise  the  philosophers  for  making  this  dia- 
lectic, and  other  such  paradoxes  explicit;  and,  like  the 
obtuse  man  marvelling  at  the  outspoken  woman,  we  sol- 
emnly say  to  the  philosopher, ' '  Why  will  you  thus  contra- 
dict yourself  ? "  In  such  cases,  however,  we  are  careful  to 
tell  neither  the  woman  nor  the  philosopher  what  it  is 
that  we  ourselves  seriously  believe.  There  are  two  simple 
ways  to  avoid  all  dialectical  complications.  One  is  an 
easy  way,  viz.,  not  to  think  at  all.  The  other  is  a  prudent 
way,  viz.,  not  to  confess  your  thoughts.  Philosophers 
scorn  both  ways.  They  try  to  confess  their  contradic- 
tions, to  live  through  them,  and  so,  if  may  be,  to  get 
beyond  them. 

You  will  no  doubt  respond  that  the  truth  cannot 
consist  merely  of  such  contradictions  as  those  indicated. 
The  contradictions,  you  will  say,  must  somehow  be 
solved,  reconciled,  unified.  When  you  become  aware  of 
this  requirement,  you  emphasize  a  feature  that  the  parti- 
sans of  the  dialectical  method  also  kept  in  sight.  To  say 
that  the  truth  is  essentially  dialectical  is  not,  for  them,  to 

94 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 

assert  that  the  truth  is  a  mere  mass  of  contradictions — 
of  accidental,  hopeless  and  final  conflicts.  They  have  as 
much  interest  as  anyone  else  in  solving,  in  reconciling, 
in  bringing  to  unity,  the  antitheses.  What  they  mean  by 
declaring  that  the  truth  is  essentially  antithetical  or  dia- 
lectical is,  that  contradictions  such  as  those  involved  in 
the  foregoing  assertions  about  the  self  are  not  merely 
blunders  due  to  inadvertence  or  to  the  incapacity  of  a 
philosopher,  the  hasty  hypotheses  of  an  ignorant  learner, 
which  have  to  be  eliminated  before  one  can  see  the  truth. 
If  the  truth,  for  instance,  involves,  includes,  determines, 
the  process  of  self-consciousness,  then  the  contradictory 
views  of  the  self  will  express  real  moments,  stages,  fea- 
tures of  this  process — features  of  inner  self-division 
and  differentiation  without  which  the  self  would  not  be 
what  it  is ;  so  that  you  can  only  see  what  the  final  truth 
is  by  first  grasping,  and  then  bringing  together  into 
some  higher  unity,  these  antitheses;  that  is,  by  showing 
why  the  self  must  pass  through  these  dialectical  stages. 
How  the  unifying  process  of  reconciliation  takes  place, 
if  at  all,  according  to  these  idealists,  we  are  hereafter 
to  see.  The  notable  characteristic  of  the  dialectical 
method  which  is  here  in  mind  consists  in  the  thesis  that 
you  cannot  grasp  the  truth  of  the  self  without  taking 
account  of  these  various  mutually  contradictory  pro- 
cesses, so  that  nobody  can  say,  "I  have  stated  the  truth 
about  the  self  in  a  way  that  simply  avoids  all  the  con- 
tradictions of  my  predecessors  (as  for  instance  the  con- 
tradictions of  Kant),  since  these  contradictions  are  mere 
blunders."  No,  in  case  the  self  is  a  process,  and  this 
process  is,  like  that  of  the  human  will,  one  that  essen- 
tially expresses  itself  in  the  assumption  of  mutually  con- 
tradictory points  of  view,  and  only  thereafter  in  some 

95 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
higher  synthesis  of  these,  then  the  contradictions  be- 
long not  to  the  blunders  of  the  philosopher,  but  to  the 
very  life  of  the  self.  When,  in  your  account  of  the  self 
you  assert  contradictory  propositions,  no  doubt  your  ac- 
count is  so  far  incomplete.  You  cannot  rest  in  that  ac- 
count. You  have  not  told  the  whole  truth.  But  according 
to  the  view  of  these  philosophers,  you  cannot  escape  from 
this  incompleteness  merely  like  the  disorderly  member  of 
Parliament,  who  says,  at  the  speaker's  order,  "I  with- 
draw my  assertion."  Even  the  disorderly  member  does 
not  thus  escape  from  his  position.  In  effect  he  continues 
to  make  the  assertion  thus  formally  withdrawn.  If  you 
are  to  get  the  truth,  the  contradictions  will  prove  to  be 
necessary  moments  in  the  expression  of  the  whole  truth, 
even  as  the  disorderly  member's  assertion  and  with- 
drawal equally  belong  to  and  characterize  his  true  posi- 
tion. You  have  gained  by  the  contradictions  if  only  you 
first  take  them  seriously  and  then  attempt  to  rise  above 
them,  for  they  are  necessary  stages  of  your  self-ex- 
pression. 

III. 

I  have  so  far  spoken  of  the  idealists  without  discrimi- 
nation. In  historical  sequence,  they  bore  different  rela- 
tions to  the  dialectical  method.  Fichte,  in  the  first 
exposition  of  his  Science  of  Knowledge  was  the  first  phi- 
losopher to  define  this  procedure  as  the  universal  phil- 
osophical method.  And  he  did  so  with  explicit  reference 
to  the  fact  that  for  him  the  self  is  the  principle  of 
philosophy.  The  problem  of  the  self  is  furnished  by 
the  fact  that  whatever  I  know,  whatever  I  acknowledge, 
whatever  I  experience,  I  can  only  grasp  the  true  mean- 
ing of  my  experience,  of  my  assertions,  of  my  insight, 

96 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
by  explicitly  reflecting  that  all  these  contents  are  in 
and  of  the  self.  That  this  self  of  philosophy  is  not  the 
individual  man  of  ordinary  life,  appears  from  the  very 
outset  of  Fichte's  discussion.  The  individual  man  of  or- 
dinary life  is  one  of  the  beings  to  be  defined  by  philos- 
ophy, and  is  certainly  not  the  principle  of  philosophy. 
The  self,  appearing  at  the  outset  as  the  abstract  princi- 
ple of  philosophy,  is  to  be  transformed,  by  the  philo- 
sophical process,  into  the  true  self,  the  self  rightly 
defined  and  embodied.  The  philosophical  process  in  ques- 
tion is  itself,  at  every  step,  one  of  reflection.  Whatever 
is  asserted  at  any  stage  of  the  inquiry,  one  must  forth- 
with add,  "The  self  asserts  this";  in  other  words,  "This 
is  known  as  true  in  so  far  as  I  posit  this."  The  fact 
/  posit  this  is  thus  logically  prior  to  the  fact  This  is. 
But  hereupon  one  observes  that  the  very  problem  of 
philosophy,  and  in  fact  all  the  problems  of  life  and 
of  science,  may  be  summed  up  in  the  law  that  I  always 
inevitably  posit  data,  of  sense,  of  nature,  and  of  life, 
and  posit  them  so  that  I  view  them  as  facts  found 
by  me,  but  not  posited  by  me.  This  then  is  my  original 
nature,  viz.,  to  acknowledge  what  I  still  stubbornly  view 
not  as  my  acknowledgment,  but  as  something  not  my- 
self, and  as  given,  from  without,  to  myself.  That  this  is 
my  nature,  Fichte  attempts  to  show,  not  merely  upon 
the  basis  of  experience,  but  upon  the  basis  of  the  obser- 
vation that  all  logical  classifications  and  discriminations 
turn  upon  the  recognition  of  what  is  essentially  not  my- 
self. The  fundamental  paradox  of  philosophy  is  then 
this,  that,  from  the  reflective  or  philosophical  point  of 
view,  I  can  know  nothing  which  the  self  does  not  posit, 
that  is,  define,  acknowledge,  determine,  as  its  own  object ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  way  in  which  I,  in  real 

97 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
life  treat  my  world,  is  to  view  it  as  not  myself,  so  that 
I  posit  my  world  precisely  as  that  which  I  myself  hold 
to  be  due  to  no  act  of  mine.  The  first  thesis  of  Fichte's 
philosophy  is:  The  self  posits  just  the  self,  and  here- 
with posits  whatever  it  can  acknowledge  as  known  or 
as  knowable  to  the  self.  The  equally  inevitable  antithesis 
is:  The  self  posits  a  not-self;  that  is,  defines  its  own 
object  as  not  its  own,  but  as  another,  opposed  in  nature 
to  its  own  nature.  The  thesis  and  antithesis  need  to  be 
united  through  a  synthesis — a  principle  just  to  both 
these  aspects  of  self -consciousness. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  indicate,  in  this  connection,  how 
Fichte  develops  the  synthesis  thus  abstractly  defined. 
It  turns  out,  in  the  sequel,  that  this  thesis,  as  first  formu- 
lated by  Fichte,  proves  to  be  again  dialectical,  and  to  de- 
velop new  antitheses,  which  require  new  syntheses.  But 
the  first  form  of  Fichte's  Wissenschaftslehre  is  pecul- 
iarly ill-adapted  to  a  detailed  treatment  in  a  general 
discussion  such  as  this.  I  have  mentioned  so  much  regard- 
ing its  procedure  in  order  to  do  a  passing  act  of  bare 
justice  to  the  man  who  originated  the  modern  dialectical 
method.  Complete  justice  cannot  here  be  done  to  Fichte. 
I  pass  on  to  another  illustration  of  the  dialectical  method, 
appearing  in  a  more  highly  developed  form,  in  Schell- 
ing's  System  des  Transcendentalen  Idealismus. 

Since  our  task  is  not  one  of  a  history  of  idealism,  but 
only  of  illustrations,  you  will  not  object  to  my  ignoring 
just  now  a  great  number  of  questions  concerning  this 
work  such  as  your  textbooks  of  the  history  of  this 
period  will  readily  answer.  What  Schelling's  early  re- 
lation to  Fichte  was;  how  close  they  were  at  one  time 
together;  but  how  Schelling's  idealism  from  the  first 
tended  to  contrast  with  that  of  Fichte — all  these  things 

98 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
are  written  in  well-known  books.  I  shall  not  expand  upon 
such  matters  at  present. 

It  is  enough  to  remind  you  of  the  main  contrast  be- 
tween Fichte  and  Schelling.  Fichte  was  first  of  all  an 
ethical  idealist.  To  his  mind  the  philosophical  prob- 
lem defined  by  the  Kantian  deduction  of  the  categories 
was  simply  the  problem  how  the  self,  not,  mind  you, 
the  individual  man,  but  the  true  self,  whatever  that  may 
be,  determines,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  the  form 
and  the  matter  of  its  own  entire  experience,  expresses 
itself  in  the  life  of  the  individual  man,  and  embodies  its 
meaning  in  the  process  of  its  entire  human  world  of 
action.  The  one  key  to  the  solution  of  the  whole  prob- 
lem is,  for  Fichte,  the  ethical  conception  of  the  self. 
To  live  a  life  of  action,  and  in  this  life  to  win  nothing 
but  its  own  full  self-expression — this  is  the  one  purpose, 
the  one  principle  of  that  self,  which  is  itself  the  princi- 
ple of  all  truth. 

Action,  however,  as  we  saw,  is  essentially  dialectical. 
It  means  winning  one's  own  in  a  world  which  is  all  the 
while  viewed  as  foreign.  The  active  purpose  posits  its 
own  opponent,  and  for  that  very  reason  views  even  this 
its  own  act  of  positing  its  opponent  as  an  act  forced  upon 
it  by  an  alien  power.  It  thus  defines  its  world  in  terms 
of  an  essentially  incomprehensible  antithesis,  which 
makes  action  possible  but  which  is  never  reducible  to 
terms  of  a  complete  theoretical  definiteness.  The  world 
problem  can,  therefore,  be  solved  only  in  practical,  in  eth- 
ical, never  in  purely  theoretical  terms.  If  I  merely  saw 
my  world  as  already  my  own  completed  work,  I  should 
have  nothing  to  do.  But  I  am  essentially  a  doer.  With  the 
completion  of  all  deeds,  both  I  and  my  world  would  van- 
ish together.  To  see  my  world  as  wholly  mine  is,  there 

99 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
fore,  simply  the  unattainable  goal  of  an  endless  process. 
Theoretical  philosophy  can  indeed  define  the  categories, 
the  forms  of  this  process,  but  never  its  essential  meaning. 
The  meaning  is  that  the  world  is  the  material  for  my 
duty,  made  manifest  in  my  experience.  Fortune,  limita- 
tions, individual  selfhood,  social  life,  freedom,  immortal- 
ity— these  are  incidents  in  the  endless  undertaking.  Ex- 
perience seems  foreign,  just  in  order  that  our  duty  may 
be  done  in  acts  that  win  control  over  experience.  Such, 
in  the  briefest  outline,  is  Fichte  's  result. 

Schelling,  on  the  contrary,  is  only  in  the  second  place 
an  ethical  thinker.  He  is  primarily  devoted  to  theoretical 
construction.  He  is  in  fact  a  genius  in  the  use  of  the 
speculative  imagination.  He  is  meanwhile  an  observer. 
He  shares  the  typical  restlessness  of  his  age,  the  individ- 
ualism, the  self-confidence,  and,  in  a  measure,  the  roman- 
tic sentiment.  But  he  is  fond  of  nature,  of  art,  and,  in  an 
amateurish  way,  of  the  detail  of  experience,  and  of  intui- 
tions. Despite  his  wonderful  constructive  skill,  he  is 
unfortunately  a  little  too  fond  of  fine  phrases,  and  as  a 
young  man  he  is  especially  fond  of  a  breathless  rapidity 
of  productive  work.  I  have  called  him  observant,  and 
such  he  is,  with  a  great  keenness  and  sensitiveness  to  de- 
tails; but  he  is  not  an  investigator  of  experience,  for 
whatever  detail  catches  his  attention  at  once  awakens 
his  fondness  for  fantastic  analogies  and  for  generaliza- 
tions which  express  much  more  genius  than  discretion. 
The  most  orderly  and  finished  of  his  early  works  is  the 
System  of  Transcendental  Idealism,  where  he  had  the 
guidance  of  Fichte  as  his  predecessor,  and  the  skill  to 
supplement  Fichte 's  one-sided  moralism  by  a  recognition 
of  aspects  of  reality  which  appeal  to  the  eye  of  the  nat- 
uralist, and  of  the  lover  of  art,  rather  than  merely  to  the 

100 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
rugged  ethical  idealism  of  Fichte.  Since  I  cannot  attempt 
to  give  here  any  fair  view  of  the  wealth  of  Schelling's 
thought,  I  confine  myself  to  this  one  book  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  his  methods. 

IV. 

For  Schelling,  at  the  time  when  he  published,  in  1797, 
the  System  des  Transcendentalen  Idealismus,  the  work 
of  philosophy  appeared  to  fall,  as  he  tells  us,  into  two 
distinct  departments,  eternally  opposed,  and  therefore, 
as  he  adds,  eternally  inseparable.  For  the  dialectic  which 
the  deduction  of  the  categories  suggests  to  him,  is  not 
only  the  dialectic  of  the  self,  but  also  the  perfectly  paral- 
lel dialectic  of  the  not-self,  or,  as  he  usually  calls  it,  of 
nature.  The  world  of  the  deduction  of  the  categories 
is,  namely,  on  the  one  hand,  the  world  as  object,  that  is, 
as  known;  on  the  other  hand  the  world  as  subject,  that 
is,  as  the  knower.  Take  experience  as  you  find  it.  Ab- 
stract, by  what  Schelling  regards  as  a  deliberately  one- 
sided but  relatively  justified  abstraction,  from  the  self 
that  knows  experience  and  from  the  problem  as  to  how 
this  self  comes  by  its  categories,  and  then  you  have 
before  you  the  world  called  nature.  This  nature  is  of 
course  not  any  "thing  in  itself."  For  the  philosopher 
knows  all  the  while  that  it  is  simply  an  object,  and  that 
the  object  implies  the  subject,  so  that  what  is  known  is 
known  to  somebody.  But  Schelling  asks  you  first  to  be 
deliberately  nai've,  while  you  observe,  although  with  the 
philosopher's  thought  in  the  background,  outer  nature; 
view  nature  as  something  found.  Look  not  at  the  sub- 
ject. Look  without,  at  the  object,  at  the  totality  of 
phenomena.  At  once,  thinks  Schelling,  it  then  becomes 
obvious  that  nature  itself,  this  endless  phenomenon  in 
time  and  space,  is  not  a  mere  substance  or  a  collection 

101 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
of  substances,  but  is  a  process  and  a  system  of  processes. 
An  intuitive  observation,  an  open  eye,  sees  in  nature 
the  objective  dialectic  of  the  processes  there  present. 
Everything  in  nature,  so  Schelling  insists,  seeks  its  own 
opposite,  and  transcends,  by  its  relationships,  its  own 
isolated  being.  "We  need  not  here  pause  to  portray  how 
this  occurs.  I  will  not  trouble  you  with  Schelling 's  phi- 
losophy of  nature.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  Schelling 
observed  in  nature  three  principal  aspects:  (1)  On  every 
level  of  nature  there  is  a  total  relativity  of  the  sort  just 
indicated,  whereby  everything  depends  upon  an  anti- 
thetical relation  to  what  is  other  than  itself.  Every  nat- 
ural object  is  an  unity,  or  as  Schelling  likes  to  insist,  a 
polarity,  of  mutually  opposed  tendencies,  whose  very 
opposition  unites  them.  Attractive  and  repulsive  forces 
as  they  exist  in  nature,  the  polarity  of  the  structure  of 
the  magnet,  the  opposition  of  positive  and  of  negative 
electricity,  the  general  conceptions  of  chemical  affinity 
as  Schelling  could  then  gather  a  crude  notion  of  them 
from  the  then  current  investigations,  the  well-known 
unions  of  opposing  processes  in  organic  life,  the  facts 
regarding  the  reproduction  of  living  forms — these  were 
favorite  instances  of  Schelling 's  general  conception  of 
the  universally  antithetical  constitution  of  nature.  I  am 
not  here  estimating  these  views,  only  suggesting  them. 
So  much,  then,  for  the  total  relativity  of  natural 
phenomena.  Already,  on  this  basis  Schelling  could, 
from  his  own  point  of  view,  draw  the  conclusion :  Every- 
thing in  objective  nature  has  the  same  essential  form  as 
also  appears  in  the  life  of  the  conscious  self.  Nature, 
viewed  as  object,  appears  thus  as  a  community  of  uncon- 
scious, or  as  one  might  say,  slumbering  selves.  The  whole 
of  nature  has  the  structure  of  the  life  of  the  self. 

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THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 

(2)  But  now  nature  appears  to  us  as  a  series  of  levels, 
or  as  Schelling  calls  them,  Potenzen.  On  each  level,  the 
general  forms  of  lower  levels  are  repeated,  but  in  a  more 
complete  and  organized  embodiment.  The  contrast  be- 
tween inorganic  and  organic  nature  is,  for  Schelling,  an 
instance  of  such  a  contrast  of  levels  or  Potenzen.  I  need 
not  here  attempt  to  specify  this  doctrine  as  Schelling 
worked  it  out. 

(3)  Moreover,  a  general  character  reigns  throughout 
nature  which  may  be  defined  as  a  tendency  towards  the 
evolution  of  subjectivity,  that  is  of  mind.  That  which  in 
us  is  self-consciousness,  may  be  viewed,  if  we  choose,  in 
its  psycho-physical  relations.  If  this  is  done,  self-con- 
sciousness appears  in  the  natural  world  as  a  result  of 
phenomenal  conditions,  and  so  as  a  product  of  nature. 
To  the  observer  of  the  objective  world,  it  is  as  if  con- 
sciousness were  an  evolution  from  nature.  And  Schell- 
ing,   who    is    fond    of    psycho-physical    considerations, 
and  who  is  a  sort  of  halfway  evolutionist,  regards  this 
point  of  view,  for  which  consciousness  is  a  product  of 
nature,  as,  in  its  own  way,  perfectly  justified.  Begin  thus 
with  the  object,  and  before  your  eyes  it  develops  itself 
into  a  subject.  If,  as  an  idealist,  you  are  all  the  while 
well  aware  that  an  object  without  a  subject  is  impossi- 
ble, so  that  you  know,  even  while  you  thus  observe  the 
natural  process,  that  nature  is,  for  the  knowing  subject, 
its  own  phenomenon,  you  can  nevertheless  quite  fear- 
lessly admit  that,  so  far  as  you  deliberately  abstract  from 
the  knower  and  merely  look  at  the  object  as  it  appears, 
you  then  inevitably  observe  that  psychic  life  is  a  product 
of  a  natural  process.  There  is,  in  this  way,  a  relatively 
justified  materialism  quite  possible — yes,  in  its  place 
inevitable  for  the  philosopher.  Mind  is  indeed,  when  thus 

103 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
viewed,  the  outcome  of  nature.  Scheliing  is  sure  that  he 
can  fully  reconcile  such  a  view  with  idealism. 

What  is,  then,  the  result  of  all  this  deliberate  abstrac- 
tion, such  as  gives  rise  to  the  philosophy  of  nature  ?  The 
answer  is:  Nature,  as  thus  viewed,  appears  simply  as  a 
sort  of  external  symbol  or  image  of  the  self.  Nature  is 
the  self  taken  as  object — the  self  unconscious,  hidden, 
but  endlessly  striving  to  free  itself  and  to  become  con- 
scious. Nature  is  the  process  whereby  the  dialectic  of  the 
self's  own  life  appears  in  outward  manifestation,  first  as 
dead  mechanism,  but  never  without  an  union  of  mutually 
opposing  forces,  then  as  the  pervasive  affinity  that 
binds  nature's  oppositions  together,  higher  still,  as  the 
life  of  plants  and  animals,  and  at  length,  as  the  natural 
process  whereby  the  human  individual  becomes  conscious. 
Thus,  in  outline,  a  philosophy  of  nature  leads  to  an 
identification  of  the  self  with  the  natural  process  here 
presupposed. 

Let  us  turn  from  this  distinctly  fanciful  but  profound 
interpretation  of  nature  as,  so  to  speak,  the  external  ap- 
parition of  an  unconscious  self,  to  the  much  less  arbi- 
trarily worked  out,  although  still  often  wayward,  con- 
structions of  the  System  of  Transcendental  Idealism 
itself. 

V. 

If  nature  is  the  unconscious  form  of  the  principle 
which  becomes  conscious  in  the  self,  and  if,  when  we 
thus  view  the  world,  the  conscious  self  phenomenally 
appears  as  an  evolution  from  nature,  how  will  the  whole 
situation  appear  to  us  when  we  instead  abstract,  for  the 
time,  from  all  externally  given  data,  and  fix  our  atten- 
tion wholly  upon  the  subject,  as  that  in  and  for  whom 

104 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
is  all  knowledge  and  all  fact  ?  Thus  to  view  the  situation 
is,  after  one  has  learned  the  lesson  of  the  Kantian  deduc- 
tion and  of  the  idealistic  movement,  an  inevitable  phil- 
osophical undertaking.  What  Schelling  wants  to  make 
manifest  is  that,  just  as  the  objective  view  leads  us  to 
regard  nature  as  a  process  of  unconscious  dialectic  out 
of  which,  through  a  psycho-physical  process,  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  self  is  evolved,  so  too  this  subjective 
view  of  the  same  world  will  show  us  nature  as  that  which 
the  self  necessarily,  although  unconsciously,  constructs. 
Nature,  viewed  as  the  construction  of  the  self,  is  the  basis 
upon  which  self-conscious  activities  are  to  be  founded. 
The  Philosophy  of  Nature  had  asserted :  If  nature  is,  the 
self  must  be  evolved  from  it,  for  nature  is  an  uncon- 
scious image  of  the  self,  struggling  on  various  levels  to 
idealize  its  life  into  the  form  of  self-consciousness.  The 
Philosophy  of  Transcendental  Idealism  will  assert: 
An  experience  of  an  external  natural  order  is  uncon- 
sciously constructed  by  the  self,  even  as  a  basis  for  its 
own  attainment  of  self-consciousness.  The  categories  of 
this  experience  are  to  be  deduced  one  by  one,  as  the  sys- 
tem develops.  They  are  to  be  displayed  as  forms  neces- 
sary to  the  attainment  of  conscious  self-expression  on  the 
part  of  the  self. 

In  order  to  undertake  the  task  thus  set  for  the  tran- 
scendental idealism,  you  have  to  form  a  philosophically 
exact  conception  of  the  self.  That  in  order  to  do  this 
you  have  to  abstract  from  the  empirical  ego  of  ordinary 
consciousness,  we  have  already  observed,  and  Schelling 
explicitly  insists  upon  this  consideration.  The  human  per- 
son whom  I  call  myself,  the  "me,"  is  one  of  the  phenom- 
ena, or  is  a  certain  complex  of  phenomena.  The  self, 
however,  is  just  the  knower  of  phenomena.  If  I  am  to 

105 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
grasp  the  concept  of  this  knower,  of  this  subject  as  such, 
I  must  in  some  way  be  capable  of  a  thinking  process 
which,  as  Schelling  also  insists,  "becomes  immediately 
its  own  object;"  and  in  the  introduction  to  his  Tran- 
scendental Idealism,  Schelling  enlarges  at  some  length 
upon  the  conditions  that  must  be  fulfilled  in  order  that 
such  a  thinking  process  should  take  place.  We  need  not 
here  enter  into  a  discussion  of  these  conditions.  Certain 
it  is,  however,  that  the  situation  of  one  who  undertakes, 
from  any  point  of  view,  to  know  the  knower,  is  a  situation 
involving  an  obviously  dialectical  process.  For,  whatever 
object  one  seizes  upon  merely  as  object,  whether  that  ob- 
ject be  something  in  physical  nature,  or  is  some  in- 
ternal mental  state,  this  object,  as  such,  is  certainly  not 
the  knowing  subject,  but  exists  for,  or  in  relation  to  the 
subject.  The  self,  then,  is  at  all  events  not  to  be  known 
as  ordinary  objects  are  known,  for  they  are  other  than 
whoever  it  is  that  knows  them.  The  self,  however,  in  self- 
knowledge,  is  to  be  object  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  also  self — 
known  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  also  knower.  It  is  to  be  fact 
for  somebody  only  in  so  far  as  this  somebody  for  whom 
the  fact  is,  is  identical  with  the  very  fact  which  is  for 
him.  Schelling  therefore  lays  stress  upon  the  thought  that 
the  self  cannot  be  in  its  true  nature  sundered  from  the 
very  act  of  self -consciousness.  Its  existence  consists  in 
this  act.  Its  being  is  its  own  conscious  doing.  The  self  is 
no  substance  that  could  exist  whether  it  were  known  or 
not.  It  exists  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  known,  that  is,  only 
in  so  far  as  it  is  known  to  itself.  ' '  The  ego  is  nothing  dif- 
ferent from  its  own  thought ;  the  thought  of  the  self  and 
the  self  are  absolutely  one, ' '  so  Schelling  states  the  case. 
The  ego  is  "kein  Ding,  keine  Sache."  "It  is  object  only 
in  so  far  as  it  makes  itself  object."  Any  purely  objective 

106 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
existence  then,  must  be  denied  to  the  self.  It  is  not  for 
any  merely  external  being,  but  only  for  itself. 

When  one  thus  views  the  matter,  one 's  first  impression 
is  that  Schelling's  philosophy  of  self -consciousness  will 
turn  out  to  be  brief  and  in  expression  simple  enough,  but 
for  that  very  reason  hopelessly  problematical.  For  a  very 
few  tautologies  would  apparently  suffice  to  exhaust  all 
that  is  possible  in  this  account  of  a  being  who  is  to  be 
only  what  he  makes  himself  out  to  be,  and  just  in  so  far 
as  he  knows  himself,  while  he  can  apparently  know  of 
himself  only  this,  viz.,  that  he  is  just  the  knower.  Such  an 
autobiography  appears  so  far  to  be  tediously  brief  and 
uneventful.  The  paradoxical  simplicity  of  such  a  doctrine 
is  already  sufficiently  indicated  if  we  remember  certain 
Hindoo  philosophers  (of  whom  we  now  know  a  good  deal, 
and  of  whom  Schelling,  at  the  time  when  he  wrote  this 
book,  was  almost  entirely  ignorant) .  These  early  Hindoo 
philosophers  of  the  Upanishads,  used  to  define  the  self  by 
an  endless  abstraction  from  every  sort  and  form  of  ob- 
jective existence.  What  they  obtained  as  the  concept  of 
the  true  self  was  therefore  a  certain  pure  emptiness  of 
all  contents.  The  self  for  them  was  said  to  be  very  lofty, 
but  was  as  good  as  Nothing.  Schelling's  concept  of  the 
self  seems  at  first  sight  to  tend  wholly  in  this  direction 
of  pure  emptiness.  "I  am  I"  says  the  self;  and  so  far 
this  is  the  whole  account  of  it. 

It  will  be  remembered,  however,  that  for  Schelling,  the 
entire  interest  in  this  attempt  to  define  the  self  is  iden- 
tical with  that  of  Kant's  deduction.  The  world  of  objects 
yonder — it  is  for  me  whatever  7  have  to  find  in  it ;  there- 
fore my  nature  as  knower  is  expressed  in  all  this  wide 
world  that  I  know :  this,  as  we  have  all  along  seen,  is  the 
thought  upon  which  the  investigations  of  all  these  phi- 

107 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
losophers  are  centered.  When  Schelling  thus  undertakes 
to  define  the  self,  he  is  therefore  looking  for  what  he 
himself  calls  the  Princip  des  Wissens.  He  desires  to  show 
that  this  apparently  empty  concept  of  a  being  whose 
whole  nature  it  is  to  exist  as  self-knower,  is  in  fact  an 
infinitely  wealthy  and  fruitful  concept.  The  act  of  self- 
knowledge,  to  be  sure,  apparently  predetermines,  so  far 
as  we  can  yet  see,  only  itself.  For  if  you  attempt,  in  con- 
ception, to  give  to  the  self  from  without,  an  object — a 
content — that  content  by  hypothesis  is  not  the  self,  and 
therefore  it  is  simply  not  the  content  of  this  still  so  mys- 
terious act  of  self-knowledge.  So  long  as  the  self  is  sup- 
posed merely  to  know  such  external  contents,  it  is  not 
knowing  itself.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  deprive  the 
self  of  all  contents  that  are  other  than  itself,  that  is,  if 
you  abstract  from  outer  physical  facts  known,  from  inner 
feelings  felt,  from  accidental  happenings  of  fortune,  and 
from  all  determined  laws  of  its  own  mental  nature ;  then 
what  remains  of  the  self  but  just  nothing  at  all  ?  Schell- 
ing nevertheless  wishes  to  show  that  this  apparently  so 
empty  concept  is  an  adequate  source  of  the  whole  system 
of  truth. 

His  procedure  in  the  development  of  this  character- 
istic paradox  of  the  dialectical  method  begins  as  follows : 
One  has  to  distinguish,  in  any  case,  the  two  aspects  of 
knowledge  which  the  nature  of  the  self,  as  thus  defined, 
has  somehow  to  unify.  "If  I  be  I,  as  I  think  I  be,"  then 
as  self-knower,  I  am  in  fact  both  object  and  subject,  both 
known  and  knower,  in  one  indivisible  unity.  But  the  two 
aspects  of  this  unity  are  by  definition  as  unsymmetrically 
related  as  they  are  inseparable.  The  self  as  knower,  as 
subject,  constitutes,  by  hypothesis,  that  aspect  of  this 
unity  of  subject  and  object  which  is  the  truer  and  the 

108 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
deeper  aspect  of  the  whole  situation.  For  the  character 
of  the  self  as  knower,  is  primal  and  fundamental.  This 
whole  idealism  springs,  as  you  remember,  from  the  thesis 
that  whatever  object  exists  has  to  be  viewed  as  existing 
for  the  knower — that  is,  as  a  fact  for  knowledge.  The 
self  then  is  above  all  a  knower.  Schelling  calls  this  sub- 
jective side  of  the  self  its  ideal,  that  is,  its  knowing, 
aspect.  But  viewed  merely  and  abstractedly  in  this  as- 
pect, the  self  is,  as  we  have  now  seen,  limitless  yet 
empty,  without  form,  without  contents — a  knower,  but 
so  far  a  knower  of  nothing.  On  the  other  hand,  by  defini- 
tion, the  self  is  also  to  be  knower  of  itself.  That  is,  as 
known,  the  self  has  to  be,  by  hypothesis,  an  object.  Now, 
as  Schelling  hereupon  says,  an  object  is  something  deter- 
minate, something  limited,  bounded,  distinguished  from 
other  objects,  fixed  by  the  attention,  held  fast,  found. 
The  self,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is  to  be  an  object  to 
itself,  has,  then,  to  include  an  objective  aspect  which  is 
not  boundless  but  which  is  definite  and  has  form  and 
is  possessed  of  limits  and  distinctions.  This  is  the  sub- 
ordinate, the  secondary,  the  instrumental,  and  in  so  far 
the  less  true  aspect  of  the  self.  Schelling  calls  it  the  real 
aspect  of  the  self.  This  real  aspect  is  never  separable, 
except  by  abstraction,  f.rom  the  ideal  one..  The  real  aspect 
exists,  so  to  speak,  solely  for  the  sake  of  the  ideal  aspect. 
It  is  as  if  the  self  said,  "I  am  I;  that  is,  I  am  the 
knower ;  but  in  order  thus  to  be  the  knower  I  have,  after 
all,  to  exist.  In  order  to  exist  I  have  to  have  determinate 
content  and  character.  I  should  not  be  the  knower  were 
I  not  also  the  known.  And  in  order  to  be  known  I  have 
to  be  found,  felt,  observed.  And  this  I  could  not  be  unless 
I  took  on  definite  characters.  So  herewith  I  determine 
myself  to  become  limited." 

109 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
Thus  the  self,  in  order  to  be  a  self  at  all,  is  committed 
to  an  internal  differentiation  of  its  own  nature,  in  such 
wise,  however,  that  the  differentiated  aspects  are  not 
upon  the  same  level.  As  knower,  i.e.,  in  its  ideal  aspect, 
the  self  is  without  determination  of  structure,  since  only 
objects  are  determinate.  Hence,  when  viewed  merely  as 
knower,  the  self  has  no  definite  constitution.  But  as 
object  known  to  itself,  the  self  has  a  definite  constitu- 
tion ;  for  only  thus  can  it  become  object.  It  follows  that, 
in  general,  no  one  objective  form  or  constitution  that  the 
self  can  ever  assume,  can  possibly  be  an  adequate  expres- 
sion of  its  own  ideal  nature  as  knower.  Yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  order  that  the  self  should  be  known  to  itself, 
it  must  thus  assume  definite  forms  and  constitutions.  Its 
self-determined  destiny  is,  then,  to  express  itself  in  ob- 
jective forms  which  are  always  inadequate  to  its  own 
requirements.  To  adapt  one  of  Mr.  Bradley 's  phrases: 
Schelling's  self  might  be  said  to  have  no  assets  except 
its  objective  embodiments;  yet  none  of  these  are  the 
whole  of  it,  nor  in  any  of  them  is  its  ideal  aspect  incor- 
porated. So  that  were  it  only  object,  the  self  would  be 
bankrupt. 

To  express  the  matter  otherwise:  Schelling  regards 
the  self  as  an  union  of  two -opposed  activities,  which  are 
unsymmetrically  correlated.  The  one  is  the  limitless,  in 
fact  the  illimitable,  ideal,  or  the  knowing  activity.  This 
no  objective  expression  of  the  self  ever  exhausts.  What- 
ever is  known  is  not  yet  the  knower.  So  in  its  knowing 
aspect,  the  self  is  nowhere  simply  expressed.  The  other 
aspect  is  the  limited,  the  determinate,  the  definite,  or  the 
real  activity.  This  expresses  itself  in  single  deeds,  in  de- 
terminate contents,  in  particular  facts,  in  the  explicitly 
finite  constitution  of  experience.  The  forms  of  this  finite 

110 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
constitution  are  the  categories.  The  results  of  this  activ- 
ity of  self -limitation  are  the  phenomena  of  the  world,  as 
the  subject  knows  them.  These  phenomena  exist  simply 
because,  if  the  knower  were  not  its  own  object,  then  the 
knower  would  not  exist  at  all.  Yet  as  they  exist,  these 
results  of  the  objective  activity  are  never  adequate  to 
their  own  purpose. 

Were  this  the  whole  story  of  the  life  of  the  self,  its 
dialectic  process  would  simply  consist  of  a  life  of  inade- 
quate self-expression  in  an  infinity  of  known  and  self- 
constructed  objects,  no  one  of  which  would  ever  be  the 
knower.  But  the  process  thus  defined  is  not  yet  com- 
pletely characterized. 

It  is  not  enough,  thinks  Schelling,  for  us  to  say  that  the 
self  must  thus  be  both  a  known  object  and  a  knowing 
subject  and  that  it  must  possess  as  its  actual  constitution 
this  union  of  mutually  opposed  activities.  For  in  describ- 
ing the  self  we  have,  after  all,  merely  once  more  assigned 
to  it  a  constitution.  We  have  characterized  it.  We  have 
treated  it  as  a  botanist  treats  a  plant.  We  have  thus  not 
finished  our  own  account.  For  that  the  self  should  be  an 
union  of  these  two  correlative  activities,  this  we  can  as- 
sert only  by  assigning  to  the  self,  by  virtue  of  our  very 
language,  some  objective  character,  as  a  sort  of  really  ex- 
isting natural  fact.  However,  the  self  as  knower  must 
not  only  possess  this  constitution  but  must  also  know 
itself  as  possessing  this  constitution.  That  is,  it  must  know 
itself  as  this  indivisible  union  of  a  knowing  subject  (lim- 
itless, active,  all-possessing,  free),  with  a  known  object 

(determinate,  self-opposing,  limited,  incorporated).  That 
is,  the  self  must  view  itself  as  thus  internally  divided, 
just  as  we  are  now  trying  to  view  it. 

Hereupon  there  comes  to  light  a  consideration  that 
111 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
determines  the  form  and  the  sequence  of  the  parts  of 
Schilling's  System  of  Transcendental  Idealism.   This 
consideration  is  furnished  by  the  difference  between  the 
conscious  and  the  unconscious  expression  of  the  self. 

The  self,  once  more,  is  to  be  a  self-knower.  This  re- 
quires, as  we  have  seen,  that  the  self  should  possess  a 
dual  constitution,  that  of  the  knower  and  that  of  the 
known.  As  knower  it  is  formless,  free  from  definite 
determination,  limitless.  As  known,  it  is  object,  and 
hence  determinate,  full  of  definite  distinctions,  and,  in 
every  one  of  its  expressions,  limited,  and  thus  inadequate 
to  the  limitlessness  of  its  own  true  nature.  All  this,  we 
have  said,  is  its  constitution.  Now  we  add  another  reflec- 
tion, "And  this  its  own  constitution,"  we  say,  "must 
become  known  to  the  self  in  order  that  it  should  be  the 
self."  Here,  however,  we  define  a  new  duality,  namely, 
between  the  actual  constitution  of  the  self  and  the 
knowledge  which  the  self  possesses  regarding  this  its  own 
constitution.  So  far  as  the  self  possesses  this  constitu- 
tion here  defined  but  does  not  recognize  that  it  possesses 
it  as  its  own  way  of  expressing  itself,  the  self  remains 
in  a  relatively  unconscious  position.  It  constructs,  but 
observes  the  result  of  the  construction  as  a  fact,  and  not 
as  its  own  inevitable  self-expression.  It  so  far  regards  its 
own  constructions  as  if  they  were  mere  objects  and  not 
as  if  they  were  its  own  deeds.  What  it  is  all  the  while 
learning  to  know  in  these  objects,  is  indeed  its  own  work 
and  nothing  but  its  own  work.  Yet  the  self,  on  the  lower 
level  just  defined,  is  unreflective.  It  so  far  does  not  recog- 
nize itself  in  these  its  own  deeds.  It  is  a  subject-object. 
But  it  does  not  say,  regarding  its  object,  "This  object 
I  myself  am. ' '  The  inevitable  asymmetry  of  the  relation 
of  object  and  subject  necessitates,  in  Schelling's  opinion, 

112 


THE  DIALECTICAL  METHOD  IN  SCHELLING 
a  stage  of  consciousness  in  which  the  self,  in  order  to  be 
its  own  object,  expresses  itself  in  a  world  of  determinate 
phenomena,  but  still  does  not  recognize  that  this  is  merely 
its  own  self-expression.  In  order,  however,  to  be  a  self, 
our  knower  must  express  itself  in  this  lower  stage,  and 
must  in  addition  express  itself  in  a  still  higher  stage 
which  it  reaches  when  it  not  merely  incorporates  itself 
in  a  world,  but  recognizes  itself  in  its  own  self-expression. 

The  result  is  so  far  this:  The  self  must  first  uncon- 
sciously express  itself  in  an  endless  variety  of  particular 
facts,  in  order  that  it  should  also  be  able,  in  a  higher 
phase  of  its  life,  to  recognize  its  own  world  as  its  own 
expression.  Consequently,  all  conscious  self-expression  is 
based  upon  unconscious  self-expression.  The  true  self  is 
indeed  only  as  self -knower;  but  it  cannot  become  self- 
knower  unless  it  first  expresses  itself  unconsciously,  as  it 
does  in  our  consciousness  of  nature,  and  then  expresses 
itself  consciously,  as  it  does  in  us  when  we  are  aware  of 
our  deeds  as  our  own. 

Thus  it  is  that  Schelling  tries  to  make  clear  why  the 
self,  whose  whole  being  it  is  simply  to  be  self -knower, 
should  nevertheless  express  itself  in  an  endless  variety 
of  special  experiences,  while  this  very  expression  has  to 
be  made,  at  the  outset,  in  a  relatively  unconscious  form. 
The  self,  in  giving  itself  embodiment,  cannot  recognize 
its  own  deed  as  its  own  unless  it  learns  to  recognize  itself 
through  a  subsequent  and  distinct  act  of  reflection.  Thus 
then,  self-consciousness  is,  for  Schelling,  rooted  in  a 
prior  life  of  unconsciousness.  I  can  only  win  the  world 
for  the  self  in  case  I  first  unconsciously  express  myself, 
in  my  natural  life,  and  in  my  apparently  foreign  experi- 
ence, and  then  reflect  upon  the  expression.  Self-attain- 
ment involves  a  prior  search  for  the  self,  which  first 

113 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
exists  in  an  unconscious  embodiment,  and  then  and  only 
then  learns  what  is,  after  all,  its  essential  art,  namely 
that  of  self-conscious  expression. 
Such  is  our  first  glimpse  of  Schelling's  position. 


114 


LECTURE  V. 

SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL 
IDEALISM. 

IN  the  latter  portion  of  the  foregoing  lecture  we  made 
our  first  acquaintance  with  Schelling's  treatment  of 
the  problem  of  the  self,  and  also  with  his  form  of  the 
dialectical  method.  In  opening  the  present  discussion,  we 
shall  be  aided  in  recalling  our  result,  if  we  endeavor  to 
make  clear  to  ourselves  what  it  was  that  Schelling  sup- 
posed himself  to  have  accomplished  through  the  decid- 
edly abstract  and  subtle  considerations  of  which  I  sought 
to  give  some  sketch. 

I. 

The  problem  before  him  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  prob- 
lem of  defining  the  relation  of  the  objective  world  to  the 
self.  At  the  outset  of  his  treatise,  he  briefly  sketched  the 
main  considerations  with  which  the  result  of  the  Kantian 
deduction  had  already  made  us  familiar.  The  world  was 
somehow  to  be  defined  as  containing  nothing  essentially 
external  to  the  true  self.  The  self  that  is  in  question  is, 
as  we  all  along  saw,  not  the  self  of  any  individual,  but 
the  self  that,  at  the  outset  of  the  system,  expressly  ap- 
pears as  an  abstract  principle  of  all  knowledge  and  of 
all  reality.  The  objective  world  that  was  to  be  defined, 
appeared  at  the  outset  as  the  realm  of  phenomena,  that 
is,  expressly  as  the  known,  and  as  an  object  only  in  so 
far  as  it  is  conceived  to  be  known  to  the  self.  The  self,  on 

115 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
the  other  hand,  was  defined  as  the  knower.  The  problem 
of  this  philosophy  is,  then,  the  one  of  defining  the  relation 
of  the  known  to  the  knower,  of  the  object  to  the  subject. 
The  problem  appeared  difficult  for  two  reasons,  opposed 
yet  correlative  to  each  other.  The  first  reason  lay  in  the 
fact  that  the  knower,  when  defined  with  the  degree  of 
abstraction  that  Schelling  gave  to  the  concept,  tended  to 
appear  as  something  which  was  simply  not  any  object, 
since  an  object  is,  ipso  facto,  something  known  and  is 
therefore  not  the  knower  of  that  object.  The  other  diffi- 
culty of  the  doctrine  lay  in  the  fact  that,  granting  the 
knower  to  be  somehow  or  other  known,  the  concept  of  the 
knower  so  far  appeared  to  be  a  concept  out  of  which 
nothing  would  follow  regarding  the  contents  of  the  world 
of  phenomena.  For  whatever  the  knower  is,  Schelling 
defines  this  being  as  in  any  case  its  own  possessor,  its 
own  activity.  But  the  phenomenal  world  is  certainly  one 
that  we  are  not  conscious  of  creating.  We  find  it — this 
phenomenal  world — as  something  apparently  independ- 
ent of  us,  and  as  something  that  appears  in  consequence 
incapable  of  being  deduced  from  the  nature  of  our  own 
consciousness.  The  ingenious  discussion  in  which  Schell- 
ing deals  with  this  problem  undertakes,  as  we  saw,  to 
solve  both  aspects  of  the  problem  on  the  basis  of  a  single 
consideration.  The  self  viewed  as  the  knower  is,  so  he 
says,  to  be  precisely  the  knower  of  itself,  and  conse- 
quently an  object  to  itself.  But  the  nature  of  an  object, 
so  Schelling  maintains,  implies  something  finite,  deter- 
mined, and  discovered  or  found.  The  nature  of  a  subject, 
that  is,  of  a  knower.  implies  freedom  from  determinate 
character,  since  determination  belongs  to  an  object,  and 
consequently  implies  what  Schelling  calls  a  tendency  to 
transcend  every  limitation,  or,  as  he  prefers  to  say,  an 

116 


SCHELLING 'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
endless  or  illimitable  type  of  activity.  The  general  sense 
of  this  thought  is,  that  in  so  far  as  one  is  knower  he 
lacks  the  limitations  and  determinations  which  character- 
ize an  object  precisely  because  whatever  is  character- 
ized as  an  object  becomes  thereby  something  determi- 
nate, and  whatever  one  speaks  of  as  determinate,  or  as 
having  a  definite  nature,  becomes  thereby  an  object.  In 
so  far  as  the  self  is  a  knower,  it  must  lack,  then,  such 
limitations  and  such  determinateness.  This  purely  ab- 
stract consideration  could  be  supplemented  by  the  fact 
that,  as  we  are  all  aware,  our  effort  to  know  always  leads 
us,  just  so  far  as  we  are  trying  to  be  knowers,  to  strive 
beyond  any  particular  limitations  to  which  our  knowl- 
edge is,  so  far,  subject.  If  you  view  knowing  pragmati- 
cally, that  is,  as  a  sort  of  voluntary  activity,  it  is  an 
essentially  insatiable  activity,  which  recognizes  the  pres- 
ence of  anything  limited  and  determinate,  only  in  order 
to  strive  beyond  this  by  asking  why,  or  by  seeking 
for  the  origin  of  the  given  limitation — in  brief,  by 
accepting  nothing  determinate  as  final. 

The  essential  characteristics  of  the  subject  and  the 
object  having  been  thus  distinguished  by  Schelling,  his 
whole  undertaking  in  the  work  that  we  are  sketching, 
depends  upon  insisting  that  the  self  is  inevitably  the 
synthesis  of  these  two  characters,  the  character  of  the 
subject  and  the  character  of  the  object.  The  doctrine  thus 
suggested  is  interpreted  by  Schelling  at  every  step  prag- 
matically, that  is,  again,  in  terms  of  action  and  types  of 
action.  The  self  must  know,  therefore  it  must  have  an 
object  for  its  knowledge.  This  object  cannot  come  to  it 
from  without  its  own  nature.  That  is  the  presupposition 
of  the  entire  inquiry,  and  may  for  argument's  sake  be 
accepted.  The  object,  then,  must  be  due  to  the  self's  own 

117 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

nature.  For  in  knowing,  the  self  is  simply  to  be  dealing 
with  itself.  But  the  nature  of  the  self  as  object  is  pro- 
foundly opposed  to  the  nature  of  the  self  as  subject. 
The  activity  whereby  the  self  expresses  itself  in  an  ob- 
jective way,  is  determinate  and  limited.  But  as  knower 
the  self  expresses  itself  by  casting  down,  transcending, 
overcoming  determinations.  Therefore  the  self  must 
constantly  act  in  a  two-fold,  and  in  a  conflicting  way. 
It  must  at  once  do  what  is  necessary  in  order  to  present 
to  itself  objects  that  are  found,  that  are  therefore  con- 
ditioned and  determinate.  It  must  also  deal  with  these 
objects  in  terms  of  tendencies — to  thought,  to  reflection, 
and  to  the  discovery  of  relationships  among  objects; 
while  these  tendencies  in  their  turn  will  always  involve 
a  striving  towards  the  transcending  of  every  given  limit. 
Schelling,  in  the  spirit  of  the  dialectic  method,  expresses 
all  this  in  the  paradoxical  way  with  which  we  have  now 
become  familiar.  The  self,  as  he  insists,  makes  itself 
finite  in  order  that  it  thereby  may  become  and  be  in- 
finite. In  order  to  be  limitless,  it  defines  itself  as  limited. 
The  general  spirit  of  these  paradoxes  will,  I  think,  be 
fairly  comprehensible  in  the  light  of  the  foregoing.  The 
whole  affair  has  to  be  understood  in  terms  of  activity. 
In  any  case  the  self  is  a  being  of  essential  duality.  In 
the  well-known  modern  phrase,  one  might  speak  of  it  as 
a  sort  of  dual  personality,  one  of  whose  modes  of  activ- 
ity is  essentially  opposed  to  the  other.  The  subjective 
activity,  the  activity  of  the  knower  as  knower,  is  devoted 
to  completeness,  and  to  the  attainment  of  a  limitless 
self-possession;  while  the  activity  of  the  objective  or 
known  aspect  of  the  self,  is  devoted  to  restraints,  limita- 
tions, determination,  and  finitude  in  general.  If  we  call 
these  two  aspects  of  the  self  the  real  and  the  ideal  as- 

118 


SCHELLING 'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
pects,  then  the  real  aspect  is  the  fact-maker,  the  ideal 
aspect  is  one  which  constantly  rises  above  mere  facts, 
either  idealizing  them  through  its  thought,  as  our  indus- 
trial arts  and  our  sciences  do,  or  undertaking  in  a  phil- 
osophical interpretation  to  view  the  fact-making  process 
as  its  own  expression  and  embodiment. 

So  far,  then,  Schelling  has  insisted  upon  a  principle 
which  from  his  point  of  view  tends  to  define  why  the 
world  endlessly  appears  to  our  consciousness  not  as  the 
self  but  as  something  else.  The  knowing  process  appears 
to  us  to  be  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  existence  of  the  facts 
known.  "We  are  right,  according  to  Schelling,  in  recog- 
nizing this  duality.  We  are  wrong  in  missing  the  unity 
that  lies  beneath  the  whole  affair.  This  unity  can  only  be 
understood  from  the  side  of  the  knower.  If  we  view  the 
facts  as  existing  merely  because  they  are  required  by 
the  activity  of  the  knower,  and  if  we  view  the  knower 
as  a  synthesis  of  two  tendencies  which  are  in  an  essen- 
tially unsymmetrical  relation  to  each  other,  so  that 
whatever  the  one  tendency  demands  the  other  at  every 
point  directly  opposes,  then  we  shall  have  made  a  be- 
ginning of  comprehending,  according  to  Schelling,  the 
situation  of  the  self. 

n. 

But  herewith  only  one  aspect,  and  by  no  means  the 
most  fruitful  one,  of  Schelling 's  use  of  the  dialectical 
method,  comes  into  sight.  The  various  stages  in  which, 
in  his  doctrine,  the  life  of  the  self  appears,  are  deter- 
mined by  another  principle  than  this  primal  duality. 
This  other  principle  is  what  one  might  call  the  principle 
of  reflection.  It  is  implied,  to  be  sure,  in  the  very  condi- 
tions that  the  principle  of  the  duality  of  the  self  has  just 
expressed.  Whatever  the  self  is,  that  in  its  wholeness  it 

119 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
must  reflectively  know  itself  to  be.  The  definition  of  the 
self  implies  that,  however  unconscious  it  may  prove  to 
be  in  any  of  its  special  expressions,  in  its  absolute  whole- 
ness it  possesses  no  character  that  is  not  again  known  to 
the  self.  When  Schelling  insists  upon  this  fact,  a  new 
and  higher  duality  in  the  nature  of  the  self  is  thereby 
revealed.  The  self,  as  we  have  just  seen,  possesses  what 
one  might  call  its  primal  duality,  the  contrast  of  its  ob- 
jective and  subjective  aspects.  It  possesses  upon  any 
stage  of  its  expression  what  one  might  further  call  its 
secondary  or  derived  duality — namely,  the  duality  of 
its  expression,  and  of  its  reflection.  It  is  indeed  one  thing 
for  the  self  to  possess  any  activity,  or  internal  conflict, 
or  variety,  or  contrast  of  aspect;  it  is  quite  another  for 
the  self  to  be  conscious  of  this,  its  own  condition,  vari- 
ety, or  complexity  of  manifestation.  Schelling  conse- 
quently insists  that  since  the  expression  of  itself,  and  its 
consciousness  of  this  expression,  are  two-fold,  and  since 
the  consciousness  of  a  given  form  of  expression  must 
depend  upon  the  objective  presence  of  this  form  within 
the  life  of  the  self,  therefore  the  self  must  necessarily 
have  an  unconscious  life,  an  unconscious  mode  of  self- 
expression,  in  order  to  possess  a  conscious  life  and  a 
conscious  self-expression.  In  other  words,  to  say  that  the 
complete  self  is  completely  conscious,  inevitably  implies 
that  the  self  is  also,  in  its  first  expression,  unconscious. 
As  Schelling  states  the  case,  "Whoever  is  unable  to  see 
in  every  activity  of  the  mind  the  unconscious  element, 
whoever  recognizes  no  region  outside  of  consciousness 
as  belonging  to  the  self,  will  be  wholly  unable  to  com- 
prehend either  how  the  intelligent  activity  of  the  self 
forgets  itself  in  its  product  or  how  the  artist  can  be- 
come completely  lost  in  his  work.  For  such  a  person,  who 

120 


SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 

ignores  the  unconscious  aspect  of  the  self,  there  exists  no 
creative  activity  but  ordinary  moral  activity;  and  such 
a  person  is  incapable  of  seeing  how  necessity  and  free- 
dom can  be  unified  in  the  act  of  creation. ' ' 

This  reference  to  artistic  activity  furnishes  an  illus- 
tration in  terms  of  which,  whether  one  agrees  with 
Schelling  or  not.  one  can  understand  how  he  is  viewing 
the  life  of  the  self.  The  self  is  indeed  a  knower.  But 
prior  to  every  knowledge  is  an  unconscious  possession  of 
the  object.  Knowing  is  a  reflecting  upon  one's  own  un- 
conscious creations.  Without  unconscious  activity,  no 
conscious  activity.  Such  a  character  of  consciousness  is  es- 
pecially furnished  by  the  work  of  genius.  The  work  of 
genius  is  unconscious  in  origin,  determining  for  that 
very  reason  the  richer  and  more  surprising  consciousness, 
when  it  is  once  produced.  And  so  here  is  the  place  to  re- 
mark once  for  all  that  the  self  for  Schelling  is  essen- 
tially of  the  type  of  a  productive  genius.  It  produces  un- 
consciously, in  order  that  it  shall  furnish  itself  with  ma- 
terial for  consciousness.  Hence,  it  always  meets  its  own 
products  as  apparently  foreign  facts.  Its  world  is  its  own 
deed ;  but  it  is  essential  to  the  process  of  self-conscious- 
ness, that  the  self  should  first  fail  to  recognize  the 
world  as  its  own  deed,  and  should  therefore  at  the  outset 
find  it  as  something  external  to  itself,  even  in  order  to 
have  the  opportunities  to  win  through  the  comprehend- 
ing, the  conquering,  and  the  possessing  of  this  world,  its 
own  attainments  of  self-consciousness. 

III. 

On  the  basis  of  the  principles  thus  reviewed,  Schelling 
feels  warranted  in  defining  a  series  of  expressions  of  the 
self  which,  at  the  close  of  the  book  under  consideration. 

121 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
he  himself  recapitulates.  I  here  follow  and  also  expand 
this  summary.  In  the  first  place  the  self,  that  is,  not  the 
individual  self  but  the  self  as  principle,  of  knowledge  and 
of  being,  expresses  itself  through  its  objective  activity, 
and  becomes  aware  of  this  expression  dimly  and  im- 
perfectly, in  the  form  of  immediate  experience,  of  sensa- 
tion, of  the  simple  consciousness  that  something  is.  The 
self  of  immediate  experience  finds  countless  facts.  By 
what  is  essentially  a  single  act  of  self-determination  it 
presents  to  itself  a  limitless  realm  of  contents,  every 
one  of  which,  as  first  found,  appears  at  this  stage  en- 
tirely foreign.  Limitless  this  world  of  facts  must  be,  for 
no  single  object  of  immediate  experience,  no  one  group 
of  sensations  would  suffice  to  express  the  whole  self,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  the  knower.  Foreign  every  one  of  these 
facts  must  seem  to  the  self,  in  so  far  as  it  is  knower, 
just  because  the  facts  are  due  to  the  before-mentioned 
objective  activity  of  the  self,  which,  as  we  know,  is 
opposed  to  its  subjective  activity  by  virtue  of  the  pri- 
mal duality.  Not  only  must  these  sensations  appear  for- 
eign to  the  self;  the  philosopher  also  recognizes  that  in 
their  detail  they  must  remain  endlessly  beyond  any  phil- 
osophical deduction.  Their  existence,  indeed,  is  some- 
thing which  for  the  philosopher  is  an  a  priori  necessity. 
For  the  self  is,  and  the  self  therefore  must  possess  its 
objective  activity.  But  in  this  primal  form  the  objective 
activity  must  be  as  arbitrary  as  it  is  limitless;  and  it  is 
an  entire  blunder  to  suppose  that  Schelling  imagined 
the  detail  of  immediate  experience  to  be  deducible  a 
priori.  What  is  here  to  his  mind  deducible  a  priori  is  just 
this  primal  existence  of  an  opaque  and  immediate  infi- 
nite wealth  of  data. 

But  it  is  of  the  nature  of  the  self  to  recognize  the  con- 
122 


SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 

trast  between  its  ideal  and  real  aspect.  The  steps  by 
which,  in  Schelling's  account,  the  self  comes  to  do  this, 
need  not  be  further  characterized  in  this  summary.  It 
is  enough  to  say  that,  as  observer  of  the  given  facts,  the 
self  expresses  its  ideal  activity  in  a  fashion  which  in- 
cludes these  categories  which  Kant  had  ascribed  to  the 
intelligence.  These  categories,  belong,  I  say,  to  the  other, 
to  the  ideal  aspect  of  the  self's  activity.  Like  the  Kantian 
categories  they  come  into  synthesis  with  immediate  ex- 
perience, and  the  result  of  this  synthesis  of  real  and 
ideal  is  the  world  not  of  immediate  experiences  but  of 
intelligible,  phenomenal  objects.  This  is  the  world  of  our 
experience  of  nature.  Here  the  contrast  between  the  ob- 
jective and  the  ideal  aspects  of  the  self  still  remains.  It 
also  remains  true  that  upon  this  stage,  despite  the  syn- 
thesis, the  self  is  conscious  of  its  objects,  but  not  of  its 
own  deeds,  in  so  far  as  they  are  mere  deeds.  It  finds  the 
products  of  its  activity;  it  cannot  recognize  them  as 
merely  its  own  products.  Therefore  it  inevitably  views 
them  as  natural  phenomena  subject  to  law.  This  lawful 
aspect  of  the  facts  is,  to  be  sure,  determined  after  the 
Kantian  fashion,  by  the  ideal  aspect  of  the  activity  of 
the  self.  The  phenomena  are  therefore  subject  to  ra- 
tional law.  They  are  not,  like  the  immediate  experiences, 
merely  found.  They  are  viewed  as  constructions,  but  as 
constructions  due  to  a  process  of  whose  nature  the  self 
is  unconscious.  Nature  presents  the  intelligible  facts  to 
the  experience  of  the  self.  The  self  recognizes  the  intelli- 
gence thus  present  in  nature;  but  it  views  this  intelli> 
gence  as  a  phenomenal,  and  in  so  far  unexplained  fact 
Were  the  self  to  remain  upon  this  level,  it  would  remain 
eternally  unconscious  of  its  genuine  ideal  activity.  It 
would  not  know  itself  with  any  completeness.  It  would 

123 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
simply  construct  like  a  god,  but,  unconscious  of  its  divin- 
ity, would  observe  like  a  child. 

If  we  view  this  stage  of  the  expression  of  the  self, 
there  is  still  another  aspect  to  be  considered.  The  true 
self,  as  we  saw,  is  not  any  individual  ego.  But  its  objec- 
tive world,  as  now  defined,  does  indeed  contain  individual 
empirical  selves.  It  does  so,  because  amongst  the  objec- 
tive facts  of  which  the  self,  on  this  stage  of  its  manifes- 
tation, is  conscious,  is  the  fact  of  the  contrast  between 
the  intelligent  finding  and  understanding  of  facts  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  existence  of  the  intelligible  phenom- 
ena on  the  other.  In  other  words,  at  this  stage  the  self 
is  not  only  aware  that  these  phenomena  are  found,  but 
it  is  also  aware  that  somebody,  an  observing  empirical 
subject,  finds  them,  inquires  into  them,  thinks  of  them, 
and  in  so  far  knows  them.  In  brief,  the  duality  of  the 
real  and  ideal  self  is,  upon  this  stage,  presented  as  being 
in  itself  merely  a  portion  of  the  realm  of  phenomenal 
facts.  Thus  the  empirical  ego,  the  self  as  individual,  is 
indeed  one  of  the  facts  found  amongst  the  other  phenom- 
ena. As  this  empirical  self,  by  virtue  of  the  process 
whereby  it  comes  to  be  observed  is  found  as  limited  by  an 
infinite  realm  of  other  facts,  Schelling  endeavors  to 
show  that  the  empirical  ego  must  appear  in  the  realm  of 
experience  as  limited  to  a  special  and  incomprehensible 
fortune,  which  in  space  and  time  is  bound  to  this  place 
and  this  age.  The  empirical  ego,  then,  as  one  of  the  phe- 
nomena, is  as  limited  as  any  other  of  the  determinate 
facts  of  the  universe.  It  is  not  completely  self-possessed. 
It  is  the  creature  of  nature  and  of  destiny.  It  is  wholly 
subject  to  fortune.  It  is  unconscious  of  its  origin,  and  can 
understand  this  origin  only  in  terms  of  what  it  can  make 
out  from  studying*  the  laws  of  nature. 

124 


SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 

IV. 

The  whole  self,  however,  in  order  to  be  the  whole  self, 
cannot  remain  upon  this  unconscious  level.  On  the  other 
hand,  this  stage  of  acceptance  of  facts  without  conscious- 
ness of  their  ideal  source,  is  indeed  an  internally  com- 
plete phase  of  combined  consciousness  and  unconscious- 
ness. Schelling,  as  you  see,  believes  that  he  can  under- 
stand why  the  complete  self  must  appear  on  this  stage, 
which  is  essentially  the  stage  defined  by  the  Kantian  de- 
duction of  the  categories.  He  is  also  sure  that  nothing 
that  can  occur  upon  this  level  furnishes  any  reason  why 
the  intelligence  should  pass  beyond  it  to  a  higher  level  of 
consciousness,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  nature  of 
the  true  self  essentially  demands  that  this  stage  of  con- 
sciousness should  be  transcended.  To  what  tendency  of 
the  self,  then,  is  due  the  power  to  reach  a  stage  of  reflec- 
tion higher  than  the  one  just  defined? 

Hereupon  in  his  development  of  his  doctrine  Schell- 
ing lays  stress  upon  a  consideration  which  Fichte  had 
already  developed  in  those  of  his  early  works  in  which 
he  deals  with  ethical  problems.  That  stage  of  reflection 
in  which  the  self  becomes  able,  not  merely  to  understand 
the  intelligible  character  of  phenomena,  but  to  view  its 
deeds  as  its  own,  and  so  to  make  a  beginning  in  compre- 
hending its  ideal  activities,  is  attainable  only  through  a 
social  consciousness.  Left  to  itself,  without  a  variety  of 
inter-related  selves,  as  an  essential  part  of  its  life,  the 
pure  self  would  be  intelligent  but  unconscious  of  the 
source  of  its  intelligence.  True  self-consciousness,  that  is 
consciousness  in  which  the  relations  of  the  subjective 
and  objective  activities  become  explicit  is  possible  only 
for  a  social  being.  This  thought,  momentous  for  the  whole 
later  development  of  idealism,  is  emphasized  by  Schell- 

125 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ing  at  a  critical  stage  of  the  work  which  we  are  consider- 
ing in  a  very  interesting  manner.  The  possibility  that 
the  self  should  express  itself  in  the  variety  of  individual 
forms  is  suggested  by  that  view  of  the  nature  of  indi- 
viduality which  I  have  just  very  summarily  indicated. 
In  observing  its  world  of  phenomena,  the  self  observes 
its  own  ideal  activities  as  themselves  phenomena  only 
in  so  far  as  these  activities  are  concerned  with  the  ob- 
serving, the  finding,  the  knowing  of  objects.  That  is,  the 
empirical  ego  is  first  known  merely  as  the  knower  of  a 
foreign  world,  to  which  he  comes  as  the  intelligent  on- 
looker. But  that  the  empirical  ego  is  an  expression  of  the 
very  activity  to  which  the  whole  world  of  phenomena  is 
due,  this  fact  cannot  become  explicit  for  the  self,  in  so 
far  as  the  self  remains  upon  the  stage  of  an  intelligent 
observation  of  phenomena.  The  empirical  ego  is,  however, 
as  we  saw,  an  observer  of  fragmentary  and  determinate 
sets  of  phenomenal  facts,  appears  on  the  scene  at  a  par- 
ticular point  of  space  and  time,  is  like  any  other  phe- 
nomenal fact,  due  to  an  incomprehensible  limitation,  and 
is  immersed  in  an  infinite  realm  of  natural  facts,  to 
whose  laws  his  own  fortunes  are  subject.  Individuality 
therefore  appears  in  indefinitely  numerous  and  various 
natural  forms.  None  of  these  forms  completely  display 
what  the  self  is.  And  in  so  far  as  they  are  phenomena, 
none  of  these  individual  and  empirical  ego-phenomena 
can  display  the  true  activity  of  the  self. 

But  all  these  finite  selves  are  also  possessed  of 
the  truly  ideal,  of  the  genuinely  constructive  subjec- 
tive activity  of  the  self.  Yet  in  no  one  of  them  can  this 
activity  be  observed  as  a  phenomenon.  In  each  of  them 
it  is  present  merely  as  the  essence  of  their  individual 
will,  as  the  constructive  principle  that  determines  their 

126 


SCHELLING 'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
lives.  But  now,  as  Schelling  insists,  when  these  selves 
come  into  mutual  contact,  when  the  act  of  one,  becomes 
a  significant  fact  for  the  other,  each  of  these  expressions 
of  the  self  wins  from  the  contact  an  entirely  new,  a 
social  sense,  of  the  meaning  of  his  own  nature.  I  become 
aware  of  my  own  activity  as  mine  only  by  virtue  of  the 
fact  that  my  activity  is  in  some  respect  limited  or  hin- 
dered by  what  I  recognize  as  the  act  of  another  self.  In 
other  words,  the  higher  reflection  which  characterizes 
the  moral  being,  the  reflection  which  enables  one  to  say 
this  is  my  deed,  is  a  reflection  made  possible  only  by  the 
mutual  relations  of  various  selves.  The  sense  of  this  doc- 
trine, which  Schelling  derived  from  Fichte,  and  which 
he  here  expresses  with  great  definiteness,  is  the  same  as 
that  which  with  reference  to  recent  investigations  Pro- 
fessor J.  M.  Baldwin  and  I  have  emphasized,  each 
in  his  own  way,  as  a  matter  of  the  empirical  psychology 
of  self -consciousness.  One  cannot  say  that  Schelling 's  ac- 
count does  very  much  to  rid  the  process  described  by 
him  of  its  distinctly  empirical  appearance.  As  a  fact,  a 
reflective  self-consciousness  is  always  accompanied  by  the 
recognition  of  others  than  myself.  I  acknowledge  another 
self  beside  me,  and  in  doing  so  I  become  aware  of  my- 
self. Schelling  insists  upon  this  point.  He  attempts  to 
show,  in  the  way  just  indicated,  that  a  variety  of  individ- 
ual selfhood  actually  belongs  to  the  modes  of  self-expres- 
sion which  the  self  finds  in  its  world.  But  the  recogni- 
tion of  one  individual  by  another  individual  appears  in 
his  account  as  an  irreducible  fact.  This  fact  is  in  gen- 
eral necessitated  by  the  requirement  that  the  self  should 
come  to  consciousness  of  its  own  activity.  And  such 
consciousness  actually  occurs  in  no  other  way.  Self- 
consciousness,  as,  in  agreement  with  Professor  J.  M. 

127 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
Baldwin,  I  have  stated  the  case,  is  what  one  might  call  a 
social  contrast  effect.  You  know  yourself  by  contrast  with 
the  other  man,  or  by  contrast  with  many  other  men,  with 
God,  or  with  your  own  ideal  self.  And  we  learn  self -con- 
sciousness through  our  social  relations.  It  is  at  all  events 
characteristic  of  the  idealism  whose  fortunes  we  are  fol- 
lowing, to  lay  great  stress  upon  this  essential  feature  of 
the  reflective  self-consciousness.  In  the  large  perspective 
of  Schelling's  doctrine  of  the  self,  the  stage  of  conscious- 
ness which  he  calls  intelligence,  and  which  we  have 
reviewed  in  the  foregoing,  has  been  characterized  by 
profound  unconsciousness  of  its  own  active  character. 
Intelligence  observes,  observes  the  world  of  immediate 
experiences,  and  of  intelligible  law.  It  categorizes.  It  de- 
fines. It  actually  sees  itself  in  all  it  sees ;  but  it  sees  itself 
as  foreign,  as  nature,  as  phenomena.  To  be  sure  it  in  one 
respect  goes  further  than  this.  Since  this,  its  whole  intel- 
ligent life,  after  all  depends  upon  the  conflict  of  real 
and  ideal  activities,  and  since  the  ideal  activity,  the  con- 
structions of  the  intelligence,  are  everywhere  limited, 
determined,  by  the  phenomena,  the  intelligence  observes 
itself  as  present  under  the  form  of  empirical  individ- 
uality, bound  to  an  organic  life,  limited  to  this  or  to  that 
part  of  the  world.  And  in  so  far  the  intelligence  is  indeed 
psychological  in  its  interests.  It  observes  mental  phenom- 
ena, and  in  so  far  it  inevitably  observes  various  empirical 
egoes,  various  individual  types  of  experience.  But  in  all 
this  intelligence  does  not  know  that  it  is  observing  its 
own  constructive  activity.  In  the  social  life,  and  only  in 
the  social  life,  however,  does  the  self  awaken  to  the  re- 
flection that  its  deeds  are  its  own ;  that  is,  that  its  ideals 
are  the  source  of  objects,  are  productive  of  facts. 

With  the  reflective  process  which  thus  becomes  possi- 
128 


SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
ble,  the  self  begins  to  be  aware  of  what  it  is,  namely,  a 
creator.  Its  knowing  becomes  for  it  also  a  constructive 
activity,  a  creative  principle.  With  this  it  is  indeed  at 
first  remote  enough  from  knowing  itself  to  be  the  crea- 
tive principle  of  its  whole  world.  Its  constructive  or 
ideal  activity  now  comes  to  its  consciousness  only  at  first 
in  the  form  of  the  deeds  of  one  individual  over  against 
other  individuals.  It  enters  the  practical  world  where 
action  rather  than  the  intelligent  comprehension  of  facts 
forms  the  central  interest.  But  herewith  the  immediate 
result  is,  of  course,  not  the  reduction  of  its  world  to  unity, 
nor  the  complete  recognition  of  its  own  unity  as  a  world 
creator,  but  an  increase  of  variety.  The  various  individ- 
ual selves  of  the  practical  world  are  primarily  subjects 
and  not  objects,  ideal  beings  rather  than  phenomena, 
self-determining  rather  than  determinate,  free  rather 
than  subject  to  law.  But  on  the  other  hand  they  are 
bound  together,  they  are  inter-related  by  the  fact 
that  they  possess  the  realm  of  intelligence  in  common. 
They  are  many  in  so  far  as  they  are  also  able  to  act  upon 
one  another,  for  through  their  interaction  they  are  able 
to  recognize  each  other's  existence.  And  their  interaction 
implies  a  recognition  of  common  subjects,  that  is,  a  recog- 
nition that  the  same  world  of  phenomena  is  common  to 
them  all.  The  world  of  phenomena  thus  gets  a  renewed,  an 
increased  grade  of  objectivity.  One  of  the  principal  rea- 
sons why  common  sense  generally  refuses  to  view  phe- 
nomena merely  as  objects  for  a  subject,  is  that  since 
phenomena  are  common  to  all  the  various  intelligent 
subjects,  they  appear  independent  of  any  one  individual 
subject,  and  so  are  taken  to  be  real,  apart  from  knowl- 
edge. As  Schelling  puts  it,  the  world  of  the  intelligence 
becomes  for  the  first  time  a  real  world  in  so  far  as  it 

129 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
exists  for  the  many  subjects.  The  presupposition  for 
every  concrete  activity  of  the  subjects  is  therefore  this, 
that  their  acts  should  conform  to  the  laws  of  nature. 
Whatever  they  do  belongs  also  to  the  realm  of  phe- 
nomena. Since  they  are  also  aware  of  their  deeds  as 
their  own,  they  thus  become  conscious  of  a  certain  pre- 
established  harmony  between  nature  and  the  human  will. 
But  this  preestablished  harmony  is  itself  something  sub- 
ject to  determinate  limitations.  Human  freedom  is  pos- 
sible only  in  particular  deeds  at  certain  times,  in  par- 
ticular places.  Every  man's  activity  is  limited.  Every 
deed  of  an  individual  presupposes  the  whole  objective 
world  process  in  which  he  finds  his  own  phenomenal 
place.  The  position  of  the  free  agents  is  therefore  essen- 
tially paradoxical.  They  express  the  deeper,  the  ideal 
aspects  of  the  self.  But  they  do  this  in  a  way  which 
makes  every  one  of  their  deeds  appear  as  a  mere  incident 
in  the  world  process,  and  as  an  expression  of  a  human 
nature  whose  natural  causation  can  only  be  defined  by 
referring  it  for  its  source  to  the  whole  of  the  past  his- 
tory of  the  world. 

However,  reflection  once  established,  the  ideal  activi- 
ties of  the  free  agents  become  themselves  the  topic  of 
mutual  criticism  and  of  self-estimate.  The  moral  con- 
sciousness arises  and  defines  the  ideal  of  the  ideals,  the 
principle  according  to  which  all  ideal  activity  ought  to 
be  guided.  And  this  is  the  principle  of  the  complete  and 
free  expression  of  the  selves,  as  the  life  of  one  self.  Thus 
at  last  the  ideal  principle  of  the  self  comes  in  its  unity 
before  consciousness.  And  thus  the  contrast  between  free 
expression  of  the  self  as  subject,  and  the  natural  limita- 
tions of  human  nature  as  the  objective  aspect  of  the  life 
of  the  self,  becomes  a  central  fact.  Hereupon  Schelling 

130 


SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
tells  us  that  it  is  this  fact  which  forms  the  topic  and  the 
interest  of  universal  history.  The  history  of  humanity  is 
the  tale  of  the  contest  between  fortune  and  free  will,  and 
on  the  other  hand  between  the  caprice  of  the  individual 
and  the  destiny  of  humanity.  The  problem  of  history  in 
its  most  general  form  is  this.  The  ideal  activities  of  free 
agents  constitute  in  their  unity  the  only  expression  that 
the  ideal  activity  of  the  self  can  ever  consciously  get. 
In  so  far  as  the  ideal  activity  of  the  self  expressed  itself 
simply  in  the  construction  of  natural  phenomena,  it  was 
unconscious.  It  comes  to  consciousness  only  in  human 
beings,  and  in  them  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  aware  of 
their  free  choice  in  their  cooperation  and  in  their  con- 
flicts with  other  human  beings.  But  since  the  ideal  activ- 
ity of  the  self  is  to  be  completely  expressed  in  the  world 
of  life  as  a  whole,  it  must  be  the  destiny  of  the  world  to 
unite  somehow  the  necessity  that  the  ideal  should  be 
wholly  realized,  and  should  be  realized  in  the  entire 
course  of  human  history  as  a  whole — to  reconcile  this 
necessity,  I  say,  with  the  fact  that  the  only  expression 
which  the  ideal  can  ever  attain,  is  its  expression  through 
the  free  choices  of  individuals — choices  which,  as  free, 
need  not  be  ideal  at  all  in  any  but  the  capricious  sense 
of  the  momentary  and  perhaps  wayward  deed. 

V. 

Thus  then,  for  Schelling,  the  world  problem,  which  at 
the  outset  of  his  discussion  was  merely  the  problem  as  to 
how  the  self  is  related  to  its  world  of  experience,  now 
becomes  the  problem  which  is  determined  by  three  fac- 
tors: (1)  the  natural  process  of  the  phenomenal  world, 
(2)  the  free  will  process  of  individuals,  (3)  the  ethical 
or  absolute  ideal,  which  in  demanding  that  the  self 

131 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
should  be  completely  expressed,  and  expressed  in  con- 
scious form,  demands  that  the  natural  destiny  of  hu- 
manity should  in  the  long  run  so  overrule  the  individ- 
ual caprices,  that  an  ideal  result  of  history,  an  ideal 
evolution  of  the  ideal,  should  be  the  net  result  of  the 
life  struggle  of  humanity.  The  problem  once  thus  stated, 
Schelling  in  a  decidedly  dramatic  climax  of  his  discus- 
sion, solves  it  by  two  considerations,  taking  him  into 
regions  quite  remote  from  the  philosophy  of  Fichte. 
You  will  remember  that,  at  the  outset  of  our  account  of 
Schelling,  during  the  last  lecture,  we  first  met  the  self 
in  a  problematic  guise,  which  for  the  moment  threatened 
to  result  in  the  total  failure  of  our  enterprise  to  become 
anything  but  a  thought  of  Hindoo  mysticism.  The  self 
as  knower  was  to  be  simply  identical  with  its  own  object. 
Until  we  observed  with  Schelling  the  unsymmetrical  re- 
lation between  the  objective  and  the  subjective  activities, 
we  could  see  for  the  moment  no  way  out  of  the  empty 
phraseology  of  the  assertion,  "I  am  I."  The  self  ap- 
peared to  be  complete  at  the  instant  when,  being  its  own 
empty  object,  it  was  nothing  at  all.  But  in  any  case  the 
self  then  appears  to  us  as  a  certain  identity,  whose  nature 
is  so  far  undefinable.  Having  carried  his  investigation 
through  such  elaborate  complications,  having  distin- 
guished conscious  and  unconscious  activity,  having  so 
sharply  distinguished  object  and  subject,  individual  con- 
sciousness and  true  self,  ideal  and  real  aspects,  intelli- 
gence and  free  will,  nature  and  society,  humanity,  the 
destiny  of  humanity,  and  the  ideal  of  humanity,  Schell- 
ing now  suddenly  and  in  characteristic  fashion  returns 
from  all  these  varieties  to  an  assertion  of  the  original 
identity  of  the  self  with  the  self,  of  the  objective  with 
the  subjective,  as  not  only  the  beginning,  but  also  the 

132 


SCHELLING 'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
end  of  the  entire  undertaking.  The  principle  which  we 
have  been  calling  the  self,  is  a  principle  so  far  of  self- 
differentiation.  We  are  now  reminded  that  the  uncon- 
scious and  the  conscious  natures  of  this  self  are  essen- 
tially identical,  that  the  self,  although  endlessly  individ- 
ual, has  also  been,  throughout  this  process,  essentially 
impersonal,  indifferent  to  every  one  of  its  own  distinc- 
tions, except  as  this  distinction  should  be  of  use  in  illus- 
trating its  own  identity  and  self-possession  of  nature. 
All  then  is  the  self;  but  the  self,  what  is  the  principle 
at  the  very  heart  of  its  nature?  Schelling  again  replies, 
"The  identity  of  its  conscious  and  unconscious  proc- 
esses." This  identity  does  indeed  demand  a  variety;  in 
fact  air  the  varieties  that  we  have  been  following.  But 
the  identity'  requires  these  varieties  merely  as  its  form 
of  appearance.  It  is  by  itself  deeper  than  all  the  varieties. 
The  identity,  then,  of  conscious  and  of  unconscious 
processes,  of  objective  and  of  subjective  expressions,  of 
real  and  of  ideal  activities,  of  the  world  and  of  the  goal 
of  the  world,  of  humanity  and  of  the  destiny  of  humanity 
and  of  the  purpose  of  humanity,  this  identity  is  after 
all  not  only  what  we  have  presupposed,  but  as  Schelling 
insists,  it  is  what  we  have  necessarily  found  as  includ- 
ing, demanding,  and  unifying  all  these  varieties.  The 
Identity,  then,  may  well  be  called  the  "Absolute;"  and 
Schelling  hereupon  so  calls  it.  The  Absolute  is  precisely 
that  which  the  self  throughout  the  whole  development 
has  been  trying  to  be.  The  Absolute  is,  as  Schelling  now 
paradoxically  maintains,  neither  the  subject  nor  the  ob- 
ject, but  essentially,  as  he  puts  it,  the  "Indifference,"  or 
as  one  might  better  say,  the  essential  unity  of  both.  Its 
form  is  that  of  subject  over  against  object,  of  pursuit 
over  against  ideal,  of  deed  over  against  fact,  of  attain- 

133 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ment  over  against  finitude  and  conflict.  But  in  itself  it  is 
rather  the  center  toward  which  all  these  differences 
point.  Its  root  is  in  unconsciousness,  its  flower  is  in  hu- 
man effort.  Its  nature  completely  unites  and  identifies 
conscious  and  unconscious  principle. 

A  certain  illustration  and  aid  in  interpreting  this 
somewhat  obscure  doctrine  is  furnished  by  one  more 
feature  which  Schelling  introduces  at  the  close  of  his 
discussion.  The  highest  apparition  of  the  Absolute,  apart 
from  philosophical  reflection,  is,  he  tells  us,  not  nature, 
not  man,  not  moral  activity,  not  human  history,  but  art, 
and  its  producer,  namely,  genius.  An  artistic  genius  is 
the  nearest  to  the  complete  incarnation  of  the  Absolute 
that  we  can  expect  to  find.  Art  is  the  fullest  expression 
of  the  absolute  identity  of  conscious  and  unconscious 
activity  that  our  experience  furnishes.  In  the  work  of 
art  we  find  that  whose  origin  lies  deep  hidden  in  the  un- 
conscious. But  it  expresses  a  meaning,  when  it  is  of  the 
highest  artistic  type,  which  an  infinity  of  conscious  ac- 
tivity would  be  needed  to  exhaust.  The  work  of  art  is  a 
perfect  synthesis  of  objective  production,  with  subjec- 
tive significance.  It  is  a  product  of  nature,  namely  of  the 
nature  of  the  artist,  and  so  it  is  in  perfect  harmony  with 
the  entire  nature  of  things.  In  consequence,  it  has  all  the 
characters  which  the  intelligence  has  found  in  the  ra- 
tional order  of  the  phenomenal  world.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  has  ideal  values,  that  is,  it  stands  in  such  relation  to 
our  present  conscious  activity  as  the  moral  ideal  stands, 
for  it  is  the  goal  of  an  endless  attainment.  On  the  other, 
it  is  the  ideal  present,  completely  embodied,  finished, 
found.  Thus  it  brings  before  us,  as  completely  as  may  be, 
the  identity,  the  unity,  of  all  the  various  elements  which 
experience  and  action,  science  and  life,  subject  and  ob- 

134 


SCHELLING'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  IDEALISM 
ject  divide.  We  have  sought,  then,  the  self;  we  have 
found  the  Absolute;  and  the  best  incarnation  of  the 
Absolute  is  art. 

Such  is  an  outline  of  this  distinctly  romantic  and 
frequently  fantastic  work  of  Schelling's  genius,  a  work 
which  Schelling  himself  could  not  well  regard  as  final, 
and  which  I  have  thus  expounded  not  because  it  is  my 
purpose  in  this  course  to  discuss  either  the  evolution  or 
the  later  forms  of  Schelling's  philosophy  but  because  we 
find  herein  the  illustration  of  very  notable  motives  of 
this  whole  idealistic  movement. 


135 


LECTURE  VI. 
HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DE8  GEISTES. 

I. 

IN  my  series  of  illustrations  of  the  early  idealism  I 
now  come  to  a  work  which  is  in  many  ways  the  most 
remarkable  production  of  German  philosophy  be- 
tween 1790  and  1810. 

The  Phaenomenologie  des  Geistes,  despite  its  close  re- 
lations to  the  general  movement  of  thought  at  the  time, 
contains  a  degree  of  originality  both  of  conception  and 
of  execution,  which  sets  it  above  any  single  work  either 
of  Fichte  or  of  Schelling.  In  the  series  of  its  author's 
productions,  it  again  stands  in  a  very  marked  place,  be- 
ing distinctly  the  most  original  and  individual  of  all 
Hegel's  works.  And,  despite  its  notoriously  barbarous 
style,  which  has  made  it  the  horror  of  the  recent  German 
historians  of  literature,  it  has  very  close  and  important 
relations  to  the  literary  movement  of  the  time ;  and  were 
it  composed  in  a  language  which  ordinary  students  of 
literature  could  comprehend,  it  would  undoubtedly  oc- 
cupy a  very  notable  place  in  the  annals  of  the  literature 
of  the  romantic  period.  As  the  product  of  Hegel's  early 
manhood  it  has  a  greater  freedom  of  imagination  and  of 
constructive  power  than  belongs  to  his  later  works.  In  its 
comments  upon  political  and  social  problems,  it  shows 
indeed  the  personal  temperament  which  always  remained 
characteristic  of  Hegel,  but  it  lacks  the  somewhat  pedan- 

136 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEISTES 
tic  political  conservatism  which  marks  the  treatises  of  the 
last  decade  of  Hegel 's  life,  composed  when  he  was  profes- 
sor at  Berlin,  during  what  has  been  called  by  his  enemies, 
his  "bureaucratic"  period.  Because  it  has  become  cus- 
tomary for  the  modern  historians  of  philosophy  to  judge 
Hegel  by  his  later  works,  and  because  the  political  con- 
servatism of  his  Berlin  period  and  the  dictatorial  manner 
that  he  then  assumed  rendered  him  unpopular  to  the 
generation  of  German  liberals  whose  influence  culmi- 
nated in  the  year  1848,  the  Phaenomenologie  has  re- 
mained unduly  neglected.  Few  of  the  textbooks  of  the 
history  of  philosophy  give  it  much  more  than  a  per- 
functory summary.  Haym  in  his  book  Hegel  und  Seine 
Zeit  discusses  the  work,  but  with  an  austere  lack  of 
sympathy  for  what  was  most  characteristic  about  it. 
Windelband  in  his  History  of  Modern  Philosophy  speaks 
of  it  much  more  sympathetically,  but  characterizes  it,  not 
altogether  unjustly,  as  the  most  difficult  treatise  in  the 
history  of  philosophy.  Difficult  the  Phaenomenologie 
certainly  is,  even  if  one  comes  to  it  in  the  right  spirit. 
The  customary  aversion  to  the  work  has,  however,  been 
partly  due  to  a  failure  to  consider  it  in  the  right  relation 
to  the  literary  and  social  background  characteristic  of 
the  time  when  it  was  produced.  In  only  a  few  instances, 
so  far  as  I  know,  have  the  critics  of  the  German  literature 
of  that  time  seen  the  interest  that  attaches  to  the  Phae- 
nomenologie  from  the  purely  literary  side.  Of  all  the  brief 
summaries  of  the  book  in  the  histories  of  philosophy,  the 
sketch  which  Zeller  gives  in  his  Geschichte  der  Deutschen 
Philosophic  seit  Leibnitz  is  to  my  mind  the  best.  The 
account  of  Rosenkranz  in  his  Life  of  Hegel  is  decidedly 
valuable,  although  I  feel  that  Rosenkranz  himself  regards 
the  book  a  little  too  much  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 

137 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
relation  to  Hegel 's  later  system.  It  ought,  I  think,  rather 
to  be  taken  first  of  all  as  an  expression  of  a  very  remarka- 
ble stage  in  the  development  of  German  idealism;  it 
ought  to  be  viewed  as  what  it  is,  a  very  marvelous  union 
of  a  rigid  technical  method  of  analysis  of  problems  on  the 
one  hand,  with  a  remarkably  free  use  of  literary  imagi- 
nation and  historical  comments  upon  the  other.  This 
union  is  such  as  to  make  the  work  of  distinctly  unstable 
value  for  systematic  philosophy.  The  critic  who  expects 
to  find  logical  formulations  and  metaphysical  doctrines, 
and  who  in  fact  finds  many  such  in  the  book,  is  misled 
in  his  judgment  concerning  those  portions  of  the  work 
where  Hegel  indulges  in  the  portrayal  of  more  or  less 
idealized  characterizations  of  historical  types,  of  individ- 
uals, and  of  social  movements.  As  these  characterizations 
have  a  relation  to  the  logical  and  metaphysical  doctrines 
which  is  not  at  first  sight  easy  to  understand,  the  critic 
is  likely  to  find  these  passages  of  character  study  simply 
incomprehensible,  or  to  regard  them  as  wayward  inter- 
ruptions of  the  logical  development,  or  even,  worst  of  all, 
as  absurd  efforts  on  Hegel's  part  to  deduce  a  priori  the 
history  of  man,  and  the  psychological  development  of 
human  character,  from  the  categories  of  his  system.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  student  who  turns  to  the  book  with 
the  interest  of  the  historian  of  literature,  is  terrified  by 
the  technical  vocabulary,  by  the  strange  array  of  cate- 
gories, by  the  evidences  that  the  whole  is  intended  to 
illustrate,  and  in  some  way  to  prove,  some  system  regard- 
ing the  universe.  If  the  Phaenomenologie  be  viewed, 
therefore,  with  reference  to  the  announced  purpose  of  the 
author,  which  is  to  furnish  an  introduction  to  his  forth- 
coming system  of  philosophy,  the  work  must  certainly  be 
called  a  failure.  Few  or  none  of  its  contemporary  read- 

138 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEI8TE8 
ers  could  have  foreseen  what  was  to  be  the  outcome  of 
the  doctrines  regarding  the  real  world  which  were  indi- 
cated in  his  introduction.  Few  would  have  felt  them- 
selves introduced  to  anything.  For  it  is  indeed  true  that 
the  technical  aspect  of  the  work  needs  considerable  ex-  ' 
planation  in  the  light  of  Hegel 's  later  work.  On  the  other 
hand,  nobody  amongst  Hegel's  contemporaries  could 
have  been  much  enlightened,  by  the  untechnical  portions 
of  the  work,  because  these  were  embedded  in  the  obscure 
vocabulary  and  in  the  suggestions  of  the  metaphysical 
doctrines. 

Despite  all  these  things,  when  once  we  undertake  to 
consider  the  Phaenomenologie  upon  its  own  presupposi- 
tions, we  discover  a  great  deal  that  remains  permanently 
interesting.  The  interest  is  of  two  sorts.  In  the  first  place 
the  Phaenomenologie  is  a  study  ofjmman  nature,  as  it  is 
expressed  in  various  individual  and  social  types.  From 
this  point  of  view  the  title  which  William  James  has 
employed  for  his  book,  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Ex- 
perience, could  well  be  adapted  to  characterize  Hegel's 
treatise.  It  is  so  far  a  book  describing,  in  serial  order, 
some  varieties  of  experience  which,  in  Hegel's  opinion, 
are  at  once  characteristic  of  the  general  evolution  of 
higher  mental  life,  and  are  examples  of  the  transition 
from  common  sense  naivete  to  philosophical  reflec- 
tion and  to  the  threshold  of  an  idealistic  system.  The 
choice  of  these  varieties  of  experience,  of  these  types  of 
character,  and  of  social  development,  is  for  us  today 
somewhat  arbitrary.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this 
choice  is  distinctly  due  to  the  state  of  politics  and  of  lit- 
erature and  of  European  life  generally  in  the  years 
when  Hegel  wrote  this  book,  namely  in  the  time  just  be- 
fore the  battle  of  Jena.  Had  Hegel  \  ritten  it  at  the  close 

139 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
of  his  career,  during  the  time  of  the  political  reaction 
which  preceded  1830,  he  would  unquestionably  have 
chosen  a  different  group  of  types.  Yet  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  human  types  which  he  actually  portrays  in  the 
work  are  significant,  are  characteristic  of  great  prob- 
lems both  of  personal  life  and  of  society,  and  despite  the 
somewhat  arbitrary  array  in  which  Hegel  presents  these 
types,  and  despite  the  extremely  severe  criticism  to 
which  he  frequently  subjects  them,  the  work  done  is  of 
permanent  importance  and  interest.  In  the  second  place, 
the  interest  of  the  book  is  in  part  truly  philosophical. 
It  does  not  fulfil  its  purpose  of  easily  introducing  the 
learner  to  a  philosophical  idealism,  but  it  contains  a  very 
thoroughgoing  application  of  the  dialectical  metho^,  and 
a  very  important  series  of  reflections  on  the  problems  of 
idealistic  thought. 

My  own  present  effort  to  give  some  hints  of  the  con- 
tents of  the  Phaenomenologie,  will  endeavor  to  be  just  to 
both  these  interests.  The  actual  waywardness  with  which 
Hegel  combines  metaphysical  analysis  and  free  portrayal 
of  types  of  human  character,  the  unquestionable  diffi- 
culty of  the  whole  discussion,  the  unsatisfactoriness  of 
the  entire  argument,  viewed  as  a  systematic  presentation 
of  idealistic  doctrines,  the  arbitrariness  of  this  singular 
union  of  imaginative  construction,  psychological  por- 
trayal, and  metaphysical  reasoning — all  this  I  shall  rec- 
ognize ;  and  yet  I  shall  try  to  indicate  how  significant  the 
book  is,  when  rightly  taken.  In  order  to  view  it  fairly, 
you  have  to  treat  it,  I  think,  as  a  whole  genus  of  highly 
original  literary  and  speculative  works  and  authors 
should  be  treated.  It  is  with  the  Phaenomenologie  as  it  is 
with  Schopenhauer,  with  Nietzsche,  with  Walt  Whitman, 
with  Browning.  In  dealing  with  such  original  and  oe- 

140 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEISTES 
casionally  crabbed  instances  of  genius,  people  are  far  too 
often  divided  into  the  blind  followers  who  worship  the 
master  or  his  book,  because  of  the  eccentricities  of  both, 
and  the  blind  opponents  who  can  see  nothing  but  bar- 
barism or  waywardness,  because  this  type  of  genius  hap- 
pens to  express  itself  in  unconventional  fashion.  People 
usually  think  that  you  must  be  either  a  worshipper  or  an 
opponent — perhaps  in  the  latter  case  an  out-and-out  de- 
spiser — of  a  Browning,  of  a  Walt  Whitman,  or  in  our 
own  day  of  a  Tolstoi.  For  my  part  I  think  that  such 
writers  and  their  works  must  be  treated  with  the  same 
freedom  which  they  themselves  exemplify.  They  worship 
nobody,  and  stand  for  themselves.  Let  us  follow  their 
example,  so  far  as  they  themselves  are  concerned.  In  the 
presence  of  the  wayward,  I  too  may  be  free  to  judge  in 
my  own  individual  way.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  folly  not 
to  recognize  how  much  such  people  and  such  work  may 
mean  to  us,  if  we  learn  to  appreciate  them,  not  as  finali- 
ties, but  as  individual  expressions  of  highly  significant 
life  and  thought. 

II. 

In  the  case  of  the  Phaenomenologie,  we  must  approach 
the  work  by  reminding  ourselves  of  the  historical  posi- 
tion which  it  occupies.  The  noteworthy  expressions  of  the 
early  idealism  were  formulated  by  a  group  of  men  most 
of  whom  were  at  some  time  at  the  University  of  Jena. 
Here  Fichte  taught  between  1794  and  the  time  when  his 
famous  controversy,  due  to  a  charge  of  atheism  made 
against  him,  drove  him  from  the  place.  Here  Schelling's 
early  works  were  produced.  Hegel,  who  was  five  years 
older  than  Schelling  and  who  had  been  a  fellow-student 
of  Schelling  at  Tubingen,  was  thirty  years  old  in  1800. 
In  this  year  he  came,  after  a  long  period  of  preparation 

141 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
during  which  he  had  lived  largely  as  a  private  tutor,  to 
the  University  of  Jena  as  Privat-Docent.  He  was  at  first 
understood  to  be  a  disciple  of  Schelling,  and  while  he 
never  admitted  the  fact,  his  early  publications  were  for 
a  time  distinctly  upon  Schelling 's  side.  In  company 
with  Schelling,  Hegel  for  a  time  edited  a  philosophical 
journal.  In  1806,  the  battle  of  Jena  put  a  temporary  stop 
to  Hegel's  opportunities  at  the  University.  In  1807,  the 
Phaenomenologie,  considerably  delayed  in  publication  by 
the  troubles  of  the  time,  made  its  appearance.  For  some 
years  thereafter  Hegel  was  obliged  to  engage  in  other 
than  academic  occupations.  Not  until  1812  did  he  gain 
a  place  as  professor  of  philosophy  at  Heidelberg,  where 
he  remained  until  his  transfer  to  Berlin.  The  Phaenome- 
nologie is,  thus,  subsequent  to  the  publication  of  Schell- 
ing's  principal  useful  works.  It  presupposes  readers  ac- 
quainted with  the  problems  of  recent  idealism;  and  as 
already  indicated,  it  treats  even  highly  trained  students 
with  great  severity.  With  very  little  explanation,  Hegel 
at  once  introduces  a  distinctly  new  and  decidedly  com- 
plex philosophical  vocabulary,  whose  meaning  one  is  to 
discover  mainly  from  the  uses  to  which  he  applies  it — 
his  own  deliberate  opinion  being  that  philosophical  ter- 
minology can  only  be  perfectly  defined  by  means  of  con- 
siderations which  can  first  occur  to  mind  only  at  that 
point  in  the  portrayal  system  where  the  vocabulary 
comes  to  be  needed.  Moreover,  what  the  German  histo- 
rians of  literature  have  called  the  barbarism  of  Hegel's 
language  was  due  partly,  as  I  understand,  to  his  Suabian 
habits  of  speech,  and  partly  to  his  efforts  to  translate 
all  philosophical  terminology  that  could  be  so  treated  out 
of  Latin  and  Greek  into  a  German  vocabulary — an  un- 
dertaking in  which  he  showed  a  characteristic  awkward- 

142 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEI8TES 

ness.  Pedagogically  speaking,  Hegel  is  distinctly  austere. 
The  learner  shall  adjust  himself  to  the  master.  The  mas- 
ter does  comparatively  little  to  smooth  the  learner's  way. 

The  philosophical  presuppositions  of  the  book  which 
the  reader  is  to  have  in  mind,  he  now  superficially  knows. 
The  world  of  reality  is  to  be  defined  in  terms  of  what- 
ever constitutes  the  true  nature  and  foundation  of  the 
self.  The  categories  of  thought  are  to  be  deduced  in  the 
double  sense  with  which  we  are  now  familiar.  That  is, 
one  is  to  undertake  what  Kant  attempted  in  his  deduc- 
tion of  the  categories,  i.e.,  the  proof  that  phenomena 
must  in  form  be  subject  to  the  laws  of  thought.  One  must 
also  undertake  to  show  by  a  systematic  development, 
what  the  forms  of  thought  are.  The  book  intends  that  the 
reader  shall  be  interested  in  such  an  undertaking  and 
shall  be  in  general  prepared  to  investigate  the  problem 
of  life  and  of  nature  from  this  idealistic  point  of  view. 
The  method  of  the  Phaenomenologie  involves  the  demand 
that  the  reader  should  be  pretty  well  acquainted  with 
modern  philosophical  literature.  Hegel  does  not  cite  his 
predecessors  by  name.  He  persistently  uses  the  form  of 
mere  allusion;  and  since  many  of  his  allusions  are  to 
essays  and  discussions  which  are  no  longer  in  the  fore- 
front of  our  historical  consciousness,  we  are  constantly 
baffled  in  our  efforts  to  see  the  force  of  the  allusions 
themselves. 

Meanwhile  Hegel  is  convinced  of  the  fundamental  im- 
portance of  the  dialectical  method.  In  his  mind,  this 
method  has  become  much  more  systematic  and  elabo- 
rate than  it  was  in  the  hands  of  Fichte,  decidedly  more 
conscious  and  explicit  as  an  instrument  of  philosophical 
thought  than  it  was  for  Schelling.  In  the  Phaenome-  - 
nologie  the  dialectical  method  appears  from  the  start  in 

143 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
what  I  have  before  called  its  pragmatic  form.  The  anti- 
thetical stages,  the  contradictory  phases  through  which 
imperfect  thought  passes,  and  inevitably  passes,  on  its 
way  towards  truth,  are  to  be  viewed  in  this  book  as  con- 
stituting a  series  of  stages  which  are  represented  both  in 
the  history  of  science  and  in  the  history  of  civilization. 
For  philosophy  the  dialectical  method  will  be  the  por- 
trayal of  the  nature  and  development  of  the  thinking 
process.  But  this  thinking  process  will  go  through  a 
series  of  phases  corresponding  to  the  successive  stages 
of  various  processes,  such  as  occur  in  the  lives  of  individ- 
uals and  of  nations.  As  these  stages  are  represented  in 
personal  and  in  social  life,  they  will,  in  general,  be  bound 
up  with  forms  of  activity  and  of  emotion,  with  human 
passions  and  conflicts.  What  in  the  logical  philosophy 
appears  as  a  conflict  of  categories,  of  points  of  view,  of 
theses  and  antitheses,  will  appear  in  human  life  as  a  con- 
flict of  moral  and  of  social  tendencies,  of  opinions  for 
which  men  make  sacrifices,  upon  which  they  stake  their 
fortunes.  The  conflicts  of  philosophical  ideas  will  thus 
appear  as  a  kind  of  shadowy  repetition,  or  representa- 
tion, of  the  struggles  of  humanity  for  life  and  for  light. 
The  thesis  that  hjstoryjjg^js^  a  dialectical  process,  gets 
its  relative  justification  from  that  dialectical  character 
of  the  will  upon  which  I  have  insisted  in  previous  lec- 
tures. It  is  easy  to  say  that  in  Hegel's  treatment  of  his 
ethico-logical  parallelism,  as  one  might  call  it,  he  becomes 
a  formalist,  and  often  appears  to  falsify  history  by  in- 
terpreting its  catastrophes  and  its  warfare  in  terms  of 
the  categories  of  his  system.  But  this  offense,  in  so  far 
as  it  can  be  charged  against  Hegel,  is  much  less  present 
in  the  Phaenomenologie  than  in  his  much  later  lectures 
on  the  philosophy  of  history.  For  the  Phaenomenologie 

144 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DE8  GEI8TE8 
uses  so  much  freer  a  method  of  illustrating  philosophy 
by  history,  pretends  so  little  to  being  a  literal  reproduc- 
tion of  past  events,  undertakes  so  obviously  the  task  of 
merely  expressing  in  its  own  way  the  spirit,  the  general 
sense,  the  outline  of  historical  processes,  that  Hegel  is 
here  much  less  definitely  committed  than  he  was  later  to 
the  theory  that  history  is  a  literal  expression  in  life  of 
the  categories  of  the  philosophical  logic. 

On  the  contrary,  the  Phaenomenologie  unites  logic  and 
history  rather  by  means  of  a  reducing  of  the  thinking 
process  to  pragmatic  terms  than  by  means  of  a  false  '- 
translation  of  real  life  into  the  abstract  categories  of  I 
logic.  It  becomes  manifest  throughout  the  work  that,  for! 
Hegel,  thought  is  inseparable  from  will,  that  logic  exists! 
only  as  the  logic  of  life,  and  the  truth,  although  in  ajj 
sense  that  we  shall  hereafter  consider  absolute,  exists! 
only  in  the  form  of  a  significant  life  process,  in  which! 
the  interests  and  purposes  both  of  humanity  and  of  the! 
Absolute  express  themselves.  The  deduction  of  the  cate-> 
gories  of  the  thinking  process,  in  so  far  as  it  is  suggested} 
in  this  work,  is  dialectical.  It  is  based  upon  the  method! 
'of  antithesis,  a  method  possessing  for  Hegel  pragmatiq 
significance  and  illustrating  the  way  in  which  men  liv£ 
as  well  as  the  way  in  which  men  must  think. 

I  have  indicated  in  a  most  general  way  the  philosophi- 
cal interest  to  which,  the  Phaenomenologie  appeals — an 
interest  in  the  new  Idealism,  in  the  Kantian  deduction 
of  the  categories,  in  the  use  of  the  dialectical  method  as 
the  truly  philosophical  method,  and  in  the  relation  of 
philosophy  to  life,  of  thought  and  will.  But  for  this  very 
reason  Hegel  conceived,  as  he  planned  this  work,  that  an 
introduction  to  philosophy  might  take  the  form  of  a  por- 
trayal of  a  series  of  stages,  that  is,  varieties  of  conscious- 

145 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ness  and  of  life,  through  which  the  mind  proceeds  as  it 
passes  from  its  natural  or  primal  conditions  towards 
philosophical  insight.  These  stages  Hegel  is  disposed  to 
view  as  at  once  philosophically  necessary  and  capable 
of  historical  illustration  in  the  lives  of  individuals  and 
of  society.  The  parallelism  of  logic  and  of  history,  of  the 
dialectical  process  and  of  the  evolution  of  humanity,  ap- 
pears to  him  of  service  as  aiding  in  the  introduction  of 
the  learner  to  philosophy.  That  in  working  out  the 
theory  of  this  parallelism  Hegel  is  unsuccessful,  that  the 
unprepared  reader  is  confounded  rather  than  led  to  a 
correct  appreciation  of  his  philosophy — this  is  simply 
Hegel 's  fortune  as  a  teacher.  It  is  his  personal  character- 
istic always  to  make  a  learner's  first  impression  of  his 
doctrines  as  puzzling  as  possible.  He  can  enlighten  you 
only  after  he  has  first,  like  a  severe  elder  relative,  long 
worried  you.  The  actual  view  regarding  the  nature  of 
this  parellelism  becomes  clear  only  to  one  who  knows 
more  about  the  spirit  of  the  Hegelian  doctrine  than  the 
first  readers  of  this  book  could  have  known. 

Granting,  however,  that  Hegel's  system  can  be  intro- 
duced through  a  study  of  this  parallelism  of  logic  and 
real  life,  the  first  problem  to  be  solved  by  Hegel  lay  in 
the  fact  that  the  forms  or  types  of  consciousness  which 
he  wishes  to  portray  appear  to  him  to  be  in  part  stages 
which  the  moral  development  of  an  individual  person 
will  exemplify,  and  in  part  stages  which  the  evolution 
of  society  embodies.  In  our  sketch  of  Schelling 
we  have  already  seen  how,  according  to  that  philos- 
opher, the  stages  of  self-expression  of  the  principle 
called  the  self,  are  partly  individual,  partly  social,  and 
partly  impersonal.  Hegel  had  learned  from  Schelling  to 
view  the  expressions  of  the  self  as  indeed  a  series  of 

146 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GE1STES 
stages,  logically  connected,  but  differing  in  the  way  in 
which  they  emphasize  impersonal  and  personal,  indi- 
vidual and  social  types  of  consciousness.  Hegel  is  de- 
cidedly less  interested  than  Schelling  in  a  philosoph- 
ical comprehension  of  external  nature,  his  own  very 
vast  erudition  mainly  related  to  literary,  philosophical, 
historical,  and  social  aspects  of  human  life,  so  it  is  nat- 
ural that  his  Phaenomenologie  should  be  built  up  espe- 
cially on  the  lines  suggested  by  what  he  takes  to  be  logi- 
cally significant  forms  and  series  of  personal  and  of 
social  experience.  It  is  a  natural  device  to  present  the  in- 
dividual and  the  social  types  in  two  divisions,  united 
by  the  fact  that  the  individual  types  as  such  are  re- 
peated, although  upon  higher  and  more  significant  levels, 
when  the  individual  is  viewed  as  he  ought  to  be,  namely, 
in  conjunction  with  the  social  order  with  which  every 
phase  of  individual  consciousness  is  always  in  fact  con- 
nected. 

m. 

But  still  another  and  different  consideration  has  to  be 
mentioned  in  order  that  the  structure  of  the  Phaenome- 
nologie be  understood.  This  consideration  has  been  singu- 
larly overlooked  by  most  of  those  who  have  given  an  ac- 
count of  the  work.  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister  had 
made  prominent  at  that  time  a  type  of  romance  which  is 
now  no  longer  familiar  to  our  readers  of  current  litera- 
ture, although  it  is  a  type  which  is  not  without  its  imi- 
tations in  English  literature.  Readers  of  former  periods 
were  well  acquainted  with  the  form  in  question  as  it  ap- 
peared in  several  different  European  literatures.  What 
I  have  in  mind  may  still  better  be  suggested  if  I  ask  you 
to  compare  Wilhelm  Meister  with  Carlyle's  Sartor 

147 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
Besartus.  I  refer  to  the  romance  whose  hero  is  interest- 
ing to  us  principally  as  a  type,  not  so  much  as  an  ele- 
mentally attractive  personality.  It  readily  lent  itself  to 
the  didactic  purpose,  and  therefore  from  the  romance 
of  this  type  to  the  philosophical  treatise  there  is  an 
indefinitely  graded  series  of  intermediate  forms,  such  as 
Sartor  Resartus  suggests  to  our  minds.  Such  romances 
are  prone  to  lay  stress  upon  some  significant  process  of 
evolution,  through  which  the  hero  passes.  He  himself 
represents  a  type  of  personal  experience,  or  development 
of  character.  The  effect  of  such  work  is  rather  to  present 
to  us  the  world,  or  some  portion  of  it,  as  seen  from  a 
typical  or  characteristic,  and  in  so  far  personal  point 
of  view,  rather  than  to  interest  us  directly  in  the 
passions  or  in  the  tragedy  or  comedy  of  the  hero's  life. 
In  the  German  literature  of  this  period  numerous  in- 
stances appear,  of  various  grades  of  importance.  Novalis 
in  his  Heinrich  von  Ofterdingen  undertook  to  sketch 
the  career  of  a  typical  romantic  poet,  such  as  Novalis 
himself  hoped  to  be.  The  romance  remained  unfinished. 
It  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  a  series  which  Novalis 
planned.  Each  one  of  the  series  was  to  present  a  special 
type  of  personality.  In  the  mentioned  romance,  as  you 
see,  the  interest  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  hero  is  the  ideal 
poet,  and  less  in  the  fact  that  he  is  an  individual  of  ele- 
mental significance  such  as  Macbeth  or  Romeo  might  pos- 
sess. Art,  to  be  sure,  is  always  of  the  typical,  but  in  work 
of  this  kind  the  type  is  chosen  in  cold  blood,  and  the  hero 
is  created  to  fill,  as  it  were,  a  somewhat  abstractly  de- 
fined order  or  demand.  In  art  of  the  other  sort,  the  hero 
is  an  individual,  and  becomes  a  type  merely  by  virtue  of 
the  inherent  and  perhaps  unconscious  requirements  of 
the  artist's  genius.  Goethe's  Faust  is  an  individual 

148 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEISTE8 
first  and  a  type  only  as  a  result  of  the  greatness  of  the 
creation.  But  Wilhelm  Meister  is  rather  a  typical  proc- 
ess of  natural  development  than  primarily  a  personal- 
ity. Ludwig  Tieck  had  more  than  once  used  the  form  of 
the  type-romance,  created  to  present  an  illustration  of 
a  plan  of  development,  or  of  decadence.  Thus  his  early 
work,  William  Lovell,  is  on  the  whole  a  type-ro- 
mance. Now  under  the  influence  of  the  literary  habits  of 
the  time,  it  unquestionably  occurred  to  Hegel  to  make  his 
portrayal  of  what  he  calls  the  experience  of  the  Geist, 
or  typical  mind  of  the  race,  something  that  could  be  nar- 
rated in  a  story,  or  in  a  connected  series  of  stories  in 
which  typical  developments  are  set  forth.  The  Phaenom- 
enologie  therefore  appears  on  the  one  hand  as  a  sort  of 

biography  of  the  world-spirit — a  biography  in  which  in-  . ^ 

stead  of  concrete  events  one  has  only  the  comedies  and 
tragedies  of  the  inner  life,  and  these  depicted  rather  as 
fortunes  which  occur  to  ideas,  to  purposes,  if  you  choose, 
to  categories,  than  as  occurrences  in  the  ordinary  world. 
The  name  world-spirit,  Weltgeist,  which  Hegel  some- 
times uses,  and  which  became  current  in  the  later  ideal- 
istic literature,  means  much  the  same  as  the  term  self 
which  we  have  employed  throughout  this  discussion,  in 
a  universal  sense.  Only  the  tern:,  "world-spirit"  is  ex- 
plicitly allegorical.  It  refers  to  the  self,  viewed  as  the 
subject  to  whom  historical  or  other  human  events  and 
processes  occur,  so  that  it  is  as  if  this  world-spirit  lived  its 
life  by  means  of,  or  suffered  and  enjoyed  its  personal 
fortunes  through  these  historical  and  individual  proc- 
esses. The  world-spirit,  then,  is  the  self  viewed  metaphor- 
ically as  the  wanderer  through  the  course  of  history,  the 
incarnate  god  to  whom  the  events  of  human  life  may  be 
supposed  to  happen,  or  if  you  will  the  divinity  in  dis- 

149 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
guise,  like  Wotan  the  Wanderer.  The  term  is  never  a 
technically  philosophical  term.  But  it  is  very  frequently 
employed    in    this    somewhat    metaphorical    sense    by 
philosophers. 

Well,  the  Phaenomenologie  may  be  viewed,  then,  as  the 
biography  of  the  world-spirit;  and  somewhat  in  this 
sense  Hegel  conceives  the  plan  of  all  except  the  intro- 
ductory portion  of  his  work.  This  life  of  the  world-spirit 
consists,  however,  of  a  series  of  what  we  have  called 
stages,  and  these  may  be  compared  to  different  incarna- 
tions or  transmigrations,  as  it  were,  of  the  world-spirit — 
an  interpretation  which  Hegel  never,  I  think,  explicitly 
mentions,  although  one  passage  in  his  preface  strongly 
suggests  the  thought.  The  passage  uses,  with  regard  to 
the  world-spirit,  Hamlet's  word  addressed  to  his  father's 
ghost:  "What,  ho,  old  mole,  canst  work  in  the  earth  so 
fast?"  For  so,  says  Hegel,  one  is  sometimes  tempted  to 
say  on  observing  through  what  toilsome  and  underground 
pathways  of  hard- won  experience  the  spirit  seems  to  find 
its  way  through  the  history  of  humanity  to  the  light  of 
reason.  A  frequent  suggestion  of  this  interpretation  is 
furnished  by  the  fact  that  Hegel  is  often  describing  the 
typical  point  of  view  which  we  know  has  received,  or  is 
receiving,  its  expression  solely  through  some  one  person, 
or  class  of  persons,  whose  life  or  lives  are  in  the  natural 
world  wholly  confined  to  the  expression  of  this  one  phase 
of  consciousness.  Such  individuals  cannot  rise  above  just 
that  stage.  Nevertheless,  at  the  close  of  such  a  stage, 
Hegel  speaks  of  "consciousness"  as  passing  on  to  the 
next  higher  stage,  which  is  such  cases  may  be  represented 
in  the  human  world  as  we  know  it  by  wholly  different 
individuals.  The  metaphor  of  a  transmigration  becomes, 
under  these  circumstances,  almost  inevitable  as  we  try 

150 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DE8  GEISTES 
to  follow  what  happens.  The  term  used  by  Hegel  for 
these  various  typical  stages  in  the  progress  of  conscious- 
ness, or  of  the  world-spirit,  is  Gestalten  des  Bewussteins, 
that  is,  forms  of  consciousness.  These  forms,  however,  are 
often  sharply  individuated,  treated  as  if  they  were  per- 
sons— heroes  such  as  are  portrayed  in  Wilhelm  Meister 
or  in  Sartor  Resartus.  They  have  their  fortunes,  their 
confident  beginning,  when  they  are  sure  of  themselves 
and  of  their  own  truth,  their  conflicts,  their  enemies, 
their  tragedy,  or  on  occasion  their  comedy  of  contradic- 
tion, their  downfall,  and  their  final  suggestion  of  some 
higher  form  that  in  a  new  life  is  to  spring  out  of  them. 
Side  by  side  with  this  deliberate  personification  of  an 
idea  there  runs  through  the  text  an  elaborate  dialectical 
analysis;  this  quasi-biography  of  an  incarnation  of  the 
world-spirit  is  associated  with  a  logical  criticism  of  a  typ- 
ical opinion,  or  of  the  rationality  of  a  certain  resolution 
or  motive  or  mental  attitude — all  this  is  characteristic 
of  the  baffling,  but  deliberate,  method  of  the  work.  The 
presentation  is  very  generally  saved  from  mere  pedan- 
try, such  as  an  elaborate  logical  analysis  of  what  is  all 
the  time  viewed  as  a  live  creature,  might  readily  entail. 
It  is  saved  by  the  novelty  of  the  mode  of  treatment,  by 
the  remarkable  union  of  a  sensitive  appreciation  with  a  • 
merciless  critical  analysis;  in  brief,  by  the  author's 
genius  and  by  his  genuine  philosophical  interest. 

The  usual  character  of  the  biography  of  any  one  of 
these  Gestalten  is  as  follows.  Each  expresses  an  attitude, 
an  idea,  and  so  a  mode  of  behavior,  a  reaction  towards 
the  world,  which  at  each  stage  appears  inevitably  to  grow 
out  of  previous  stages.  Any  such  stage  of  consciousness 
presents  itself,  therefore,  as  inevitable,  as  rational,  as 
the  only  way  to  live  and  to  think,  as  the  interpretation, 

151 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
of  life,  of  thought,  and  of  the  universe.  As  a  fact,  so 
Hegel  frequently  assures  us,  each  of  these  forms  ex- 
presses in  its  own  way,  and  according  to  its  own  lights, 
the  genuine  nature  of  the  self.  Within  its  own  limits, 
each  of  these  forms  is  the  truth.  It  possesses  in  gen- 
eral "the  certainty  that  it  is  all  reality."  As  a  fact, 
however,  it  implies  some  sort  of  contrast  between  a  sub- 
jective and  an  objective  aspect,  present  either  within 
what  it  regards  as  itself,  or  in  its  relation  to  what  it  re- 
gards as  its  external  world.  In  other  words,  each  of 
these  forms  exemplifies  some  aspect  of  the  problem  of 
self-consciousness,  some  aspect  of  the  problem  as  to  the 
relation  between  thought  and  reality.  And  this  prob- 
lem also  appears  in  every  such  case  as  having  more  or 
less  of  practical,  of  passionate,  or  at  least  of  significant 
/—  and  interesting  value.  The  theoretical  problems  always 
appear  as  also  life  problems.  The  Gestalt  in  question,  the 
Weltgeist  thus  incarnate,  first  becomes  aware  of  its  prob- 
lem by  noting  that  it  has  not  yet  fully  and  consciously 
expressed,  and  found,  what  it  means.  Is  it  a  contempla- 
tive observer  of  facts  ?  Then  it  has  not  yet  seen  just  how 
these  facts  are  related  to  its  own  nature.  Is  it  rather  a 
practical  attitude  towards  the  world,  an  attitude  of  am- 
bition, of  protest,  of  rebellion,  of  reform  ?  Then  it  has  not 
yet  carried  out  its  work.  It  must  proceed  to  fight  its  bat- 
tle and  to  express  itself.  As  the  Gestalt  thus  undertakes 
the  work  of  its  little  life,  or  on  higher  stages,  of  its  world- 
wide expression,  it  at  once  must  develop  what  is  within 
and  come  in  conflict  with  what  is  without.  The  result  is, 
often  enough,  so  far  as  this  Gestalt  is  concerned,  either 
comic  or  tragic  in  the  resulting  dialectic.  The  calm  con- 
fidence of  its  beginning,  or,  so  to  speak,  of  its  youth, 
turns  as  it  proceeds  into  disappointment,  into  contra- 

152 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DE8  GEISTE8 
diction,  into  a  more  or  less  logical  repentance.  Its  ideas 
prove  to  be  fantastic,  its  supposed  facts  turn  out  to  be 
dreams;  its  sincerity  is  exposed  through  the  experience 
of  life  and  through  a  merciless  self-criticism,  and  then 
proves  to  be,  sometimes  self-deception,  sometimes  hypoc- 
risy, frequently  both.  The  destiny  of  its  life  is  deter- 
mined on  the  whole  by  a  formula  characteristic  of  He- 
gel's view  of  the  dialectic  method.  Its  external  conflicts 
with  the  world  that  it  views  as  its  object  or  as  other  than 
itself,  turn  out  to  be  also  essentially  internal  conflicts. 
That  is,  for  its  own  difficulties,  it  blames  the  world  at 
first,  but  discovers  that  the  fault  is  its  own.  On  the  other 
hand,  its  internal  diremption,  its  inner  contradiction,  al- 
ways expresses  itself  in  external  conflicts.  And  just  this 
unity  of  the  external  and  internal  is  what  furnishes  the 
positive  result  of  the  process  which  upon  each  stage  is 
carried  out.  What  the  Gestalt  has  falsely  regarded  as  its 
own,  proves  to  be  due  to  what  it  had  thought  to  be  the 
utterly  foreign  world.  On  the  other  hand,  whatever  it 
finds  in  its  world  proves  to  be  in  turn  the  development, 
or  the  expression,  of  its  own  nature.  Hence  its  failure 
implies  a  reconstruction  of  the  view  regarding  itself  and 
its  world,  with  which  it  had  begun.  What  it  had  called 
its  own  comes  to  seem  foreign  to  it.  What  it  had  called 
utterly  remote,  and  merely  a  not-self,  turns  out  to  be  its 
own  flesh  and  blood.  In  its  own  special  form,  then,  this 
typical  incarnation  of  the  world-spirit  passes  away.  But  it 
gives  place  to  an  enriched  view  of  the  nature  of  things, 
which  takes  form  in  some  new  type  of  consciousness. 

As  the  reader  follows  this  series  of  typical  forms  of 
consciousness,  he  is  constantly  impressed  with  the  merci- 
lessly negative  criticism  which  at  every  stage  greets  what- 
ever at  the  outset  seems  most  individual  of  each  Gestalt, 

153 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

and  most  sacred  from  its  point  of  view.  That  in  develop- 
ing such  an  attitude  Hegel  is  constantly  inspired  by  a 
sense  of  the  stern  judgment  that  life  and  history  in  his 
day  had  passed  upon  human  illusion  and  upon  false  ef- 
forts, is  obvious  enough.  But  the  criticism  in  question  is 
characteristic  of  the  philosopher's  own  technical  method. 
As  dialectician,  as  exposer  of  contradictions,  as  negative 
adept  in  reflection,  Hegel  has  learned  from  Socrates, 
from  the  Platonic  dialogues,  from  the  Kantian  antin- 
omies, from  Fichte,  and  from  Schelling's  joyous  fond- 
ness for  paradoxes.  The  negative  procedure  on  its  tech- 
nical side,  is  deliberate,  minute,  and  often  wearisome.  It 
is  represented  at  each  stage  by  the  philosopher  not  as  his 
own  external  comment  but  as  the  internal  development 
and  experience  of  the  Gestalt  in  question.  But  the  reader 
learns  to  feel  a  sympathy  for  each  successive  incarnation 
of  the  Weltgeist,  as  conscious  in  the  beginning  of  its  own 
universal  and  divine  mission,  it  sets  out  upon  its  career 
of  world  conquest,  arrayed  with  all  the  spoils  that  have 
been  accumulated  by  the  labors  of  its  predecessors,  only 
to  find  itself  ere  long  fast  bound  in  the  net  of  its  own 
contradictions,  and  ending  its  days  like  a  blinded  Sam- 
son, a  victim  to  the  Philistines  who  are,  after  all,  in  this 
idealistic  world,  only  its  own  thoughts.  As  a  fact,  Hegel 
regards  and  expressly  proclaims  the  principle  of  what 
he  here  calls  "negativity"  as  the  principle  both  of  the 
world  process  and  of  philosophical  logic.  Thus  the  dia- 
lectical method  reaches  in  this  work  an  explicitness  not 
previously  known  in  philosophical  literature.  But  it  must 
not  be  supposed  that  Hegel  himself  viewed  this  process  as 
purely  negative.  In  his  introduction  to  the  work,  and 
repeatedly  in  the  course  of  his  discussion,  he  points  out 
that  each  of  these  negative  discoveries,  however  tragic 

154 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEISTE8 

from  the  point  of  view  of  the  life,  that  is,  of  the  idea  or 
opinion  or  attitude  concerned,  is  in  fact  also  a  positive 
discovery,  a  new  revelation  as  to  the  inter-relation  of  the 
mind  and  of  things,  a  new  proof  that  in  the  realm  of  ex- 
perience subject  and  object  are  not  to  be  sundered,  and 
that  their  unity  develops  out  of  the  very  conflicts  which 
appear  to  exist  between  them  so  long  as  their  relations 
are  imperfectly  appreciated. 

Rosenkranz  in  his  biography  of  Hegel,  narrates  an 
oft-cited  story  of  how  in  later  years,  when  Hegel  was  at 
Heidelberg,  a  company  of  students  to  whom  he  was  one 
evening  in  private  conversation  expounding  some  aspects 
and  results  of  the  dialectic  method,  listened  with  a 
certain  terror  to  the  apparently  destructive  attack  upon 
various  traditional  views ;  so  that  when  Hegel  at  length  ' 
rose  and  left,  one  of  the  students  exclaimed,  as  he 
watched  the  retreating  figure, ' '  That  is  nobody  but  death 
himself,  and  so  must  everything  pass  away."  (Das  sei 
der  Tod  seller,  und  so  milsse  alles  vergehen.)  Another 
who  was  present  had  caught  the  positive  undertone  and 
outcome  of  the  discussion,  and  expressed  himself  more 
cheerfully.  As  a  fact,  it  was  Hegel's  characteristic  view 
that  all  such  negations  mean,  when  viewed  as  it  were  ~—-\ 
from  above,  the  inner  self-differentiation  of  the  life  of 
the  spirit,  the  enrichment  of  its  existence  through  mani- 
fold finite  expressions,  which  in  their  very  variety  and 
mutual  opposition  supplement  one  another,  and  together 
express  the  totality  of  a  true  life.  The  truth,  says  Hegel, 
in  the  introduction  to  the  Phaenomenologie,  "is  the 
whole."  And  because  the  truth  is  the  whole,  the  utmost 
power  of  negation  is  powerless  to  prevent  the  world- 
spirit  from  coming  to  life  in  new  forms,  or  from  express- 
ing, through  the  higher  wealth  which  these  new  forms 

155 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
contain,  the  positive  results,  which,  for  Hegel,  are  the 
inevitable  outcome  of  the  lower  stages. 

IV. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  sketch  a  little  more  con- 
nectedly the  way  in  which  the  Phaenomenologie  is  built 
up.  In  the  course  of  the  preface  which  has  become  famous 
as  the  first  formal  statement  of  the  programme  of  the 
coming  Hegelian  system  of  philosophy,  Hegel  announces 
that  instead  of  beginning  his  proposed  system  with  a 
direct  account  of  the  proof,  he  undertakes  to  prepare 
the  way  for  philosophy  by  recounting  the  experience 
through  which  consciousness  passes  from  naive  to  phil- 
osophical insight.  The  plan  of  defining  a  series  of  Ge- 
stalten  is  outlined.  The  relation  of  the  logical  examination 
of  these  stages  to  their  character  as  forms  present  in  the 
course  of  the  life-history  of  humanity,  is  set  forth.  By  the 
V  word  ' '  consciousness ' '  Hegel  means  a  mental  process,  in 
so  far  as  it  stands  over  against  and  opposed  to  some  sort 
of  fact  or  object.  He  defines  in  general  the  problem  of 
consciousness  as  the  problem  of  determining  its  own  re- 
lation to  its  object.  This  relation  cannot  be  determined 
without  passing  through  a  succession  of  views  in  which 
both  the  consciousness  in  question  and  the  object  of  this 
consciousness  are  altered  through  reflection  and  through 
an  experience  of  the  problems  of  the  situation.  Con- 
sciousness, as  he  indicates  in  beginning  the  enterprise, 
will  appear  upon  four  distinct  stages.  First  it  appears  as 

ymere  consciousness,  that  is,  as  the  knowing  process  which 
finds  a  world  of  facts  over  against  it,  and  which  simply 
examines  these  facts  to  find  what  is  certain  or  true  about 
them.  The  second  is  the  stage  of  self -consciousness,  that 
is,  of  the  essentially  idealistic  view,  which  regards  its 

156 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEISTES 
object  as  in  somewise  the  expression  of  itsell.  The  third 
is  the  stage  of  reason,  in  which  the  objects  of  conscious- 
ness exist  as  the  relatively  impersonal  embodiment  of 
ideas,  but  in  such  wise  that  this  highly  categorized  world, 
is  regarded  by  the  self  as  still  identical  in  principle 
with  its  own  constitution,  so  that  the  attitude  of  con- 
sciousness is  expressible  thus:  There  is  indeed  a  world, 
and  a  real  one,  but  this  world  is  essentially  mine,  to  com- 
prehend by  my  science,  or  to  conquer  by  my  will,  in 
short,  to  possess,  not  as  my  private  caprice,  but  as  my 
universally  valid  truth.  The  fourth  stage  of  conscious- 
ness is  called  Cleist,  that  is,  mind  or  spirit,  in  its  fully 
concrete  or  explicit  sense.  The  world  of  the  spirit  is  the 
world  which  consists  not  only  of  my  universally  valid 
truth,  but  of  my  conscious  truth,  as  is  expressed  by  a 
social  order  to  which  I  belong,  by  a  humanity  in  whose 
life  I  take  part.  At  the  summit  of  the  world  of  the  spirit, 
as  its  absolute  expression,  appears  a  form  or  series  of 
forms  of  consciousness,  which  in  the  table  of  contents  of 
the  Phaenomenologie  is  formally  sundered  from  the 
Geist  proper,  that  is,  from  the  social  type  of  conscious- 
ness. This  is  the  consciousness  of  what  one  might  call  the 
super-social  or  religious  realm,  the  last  realm  where  con- 
sciousness pauses  before  it  becomes  explicitly  and  reflec- 
tively philosophical. 

In  treating  the  first  of  these  forms,  namely  Bewusstein, 
or  simple  consciousness,  Hegel  makes  no  attempt  at  in- 
troducing the  quasi-biographical  form  which  we  have 
discussed  in  the  foregoing.  This,  which  is  the  introduc- 
tory discussion  of  the  text,  contains  an  elaborate  dialec- 
tical proof  of  the  general  thesis  of  idealism.  The  ground 
covered  is  somewhat  similar  to  that  which  one  finds 
covered  in  Fichte  and  in  Schelling,  although  the  argu- 

157 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ment  is  decidedly  novel.  The  text  is  here,  especially  at  a 
first  reading,  extremely  difficult,  and  has  unquestionably 
served  to  render  the  book  esoteric,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  most  readers.  What  is  characteristic  of  the  Phae- 
nomenologie  begins  with  the  second  stage,  with  self-con- 
sciousness. Hegel's  treatment  is  here  founded  upon  the 
thought  that,  although  a  technical  idealism  is  confined  to 
the  philosophers,  every  human  being  is  practically,  that 
is,  in  what  we  might  now  call  the  pragmatic  sense,  an 
idealist.  For  it  is  of  the  nature  of  a  rational  being  to 
assert  himself  as  the  central  reality  of  the  world,  and 
then  to  attempt  to  interpret  all  that  he  finds  in  terms  of 
his  own  interests.  So  herewith  the  union  of  logical  analy- 
sis with  typical  portrayal  of  human  character  and  des- 
tiny begins.  The  first  stage  of  self -consciousness  is  repre- 
sented by  the  nai've  individualism  of  the  child  or  of  the 
savage.  The  movement  present  upon  this  stage  is  deter- 
mined by  the  fact  upon  which  Fichte  and  Schelling  had 
insisted,  by  the  fact  that  the  self  in  order  to  be  individ- 
ual, must  needs  be,  however  crudely,  social,  that  is,  must 
know  itself  by  contrast  with  the  other.  Hence  the  first 
expression  of  self-consciousness  in  the  form  of  crude  in- 
dividualism, observes  itself  by  virtue  of  contrast  with  the 
other  self  who  appears  as  the  intruder  and  disturber, 
that  is,  as  false  self  in  the  world  of  the  savage  individual. 
"I  am  the  self;  but  who  are  you?"  Such  is  the  attitude 
in  terms  of  which  the  savage,  or  the  boy,  greets  the 
stranger.  Hence  the  natural  condition  of  the  crude  self 
is  indeed  one  of  warfare  with  its  kind.  This  primitive 
stage,  essentially  self-destructive,  quickly  gives  place  to 
stages  of  self -consciousness  which  involve  still  crude  but 
intense  forms  of  higher  individualism.  As  the  self  grows, 
its  world  becomes  more  complex ;  and  at  the  stage  of  rea- 

158 


HEGEL'S  PHAENOMENOLOGIE  DES  GEISTES 
son  we  pass  to  forms  of  consciousness  which  are  still 
individual,  but  which  appear  with  a  highly  rational  or 
elaborately  categorized  world  over  against  them,  in  which 
they  seek  their  victory  or  their  task,  in  terms  which  are 
not  only  individualistic,  but  also  explicitly  universal,  so 
that  each  Gestalt  seeks  what  it  views  as  that  which  all  the 
world  is  seeking.  The  world  of  Geist  next  appears  as  a 
series  of  incarnations  of  the  self,  which  are  no  longer 
individual,  but  explicitly  universal,  and  also  social.  In 
other  words,  these  Gestalten  are  now  entire  societies,  na- 
tions, stages  of  culture,  or  on  higher  levels,  movements 
of  thought  and  of  general  social  action, — reforms,  recon- 
stitutions  of  society,  institutions  possessing  spiritual 
significance. 

The  chronological  relations  which  these  various  forms 
are  conceived  to  have,  involves  a  complication  only  grad- 
ually explained  in  the  text;  the  Gestalten  of  self -con- 
sciousness and  of  reason  are  contemporaneous  with  those 
of  the  Geist.  That  is,  there  are  certain  forms  of  individ- 
uality, which  are  found  in,  and  are  characteristic  of, 
certain  social  types ;  and  which  therefore  in  time  appear 
along  with  the  latter.  But  for  the  sake  of  the  dialectical 
analysis,  the  forms  of  self-consciousness  and  of  reason 
are  analyzed  before  the  forms  of  the  Geist .  A  similar  link 
connects  certain  forms  of  the  religious  consciousness  with 
certain  stages  in  the  history  of  the  Geist.  Yet  the  forms 
of  the  religious  consciousness  are  never  treated  in  their 
entirety  until  after  the  forms  of  the  social  mind  have 
been  successively  presented. 

So  much  for  a  first  sketch  of  the  plan  of  the  Phaenom- 
enologie.  Its  outcome,  viewed  as  a  dialectical  achieve- 
ment, is  to  be  the  definition  of  a  form  of  consciousness 
which  is  to  be  identical  with  the  philosophical  conscious- 

159 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ness  itself.  Philosophy  appears,  in  Hegel's  account,  as 
the  result  of  the  lesson  of  the  world's  history.  Yet  this 
result  does  not  depend  merely  upon  transcending,  but 
upon  including  all  the  forms  of  experience  and  of  self- 
expression  which  have  been  learned  by  the  way.  The 
philosophical  definition  of  the  nature  of  the  self,  and  of 
its  relation  to  the  world,  will  be  possible  only  upon  the 
basis  of  an  appreciation  of  the  forms  under  which  the 
self  expresses  itself  in  the  history  of  humanity.  The..Ies- 
spn  of  history  will  be  transformed  by  philosophy  into 
the  law  of  logic.  Yet  on  the  other  hand,  the  logical  de- 
velopment is  dependent  upon,  and  in  its  own  abstract 
way  will  repeat,  the  development  that  the  mind  gets, 
through  practical  conflict  with  the  world  and  with  itself. 
The  history  of  the  human  will,  and  of  its  purification 
through  conflict  and  through  tragedy,  will  be  reflected 
in  the  realm  of  pure  thought  in  the  sequence  of  cate- 
gories, and  in  the  definition  of  truth. 

Fichte,  as  you  remember,  had  defined  an  ethical  ideal* 
ism.  Schelling  had  added  an  effort  to  unify  idealism  and 
natural  history,  and  had  found  the  culmination  of  his 
doctrine  at  the  moment  when  he  wrote  the  work  which 
we  at  the  last  time  reviewed,  in  a  philosophy  of  art. 
Hegel  begins  by  conceiving  that  the  logic  of  history,  or 
more  generally,  the  logic  of  human  activity  and  of  the 
human  will,  is  a  natural  preliminary  to  the  compre- 
hension of  theoretical  truth. 


160 


LECTURE  VII. 

TYPES    OF    INDIVIDUAL    AND    SOCIAL 

CONSCIOUSNESS   IN  HEGEL'S 

PHAENOMENOLOGIE. 

IN  beginning  the  present  discussion,  it  seems  worth 
while  to  state  a  little  more  explicitly  than  was  done 
at  the  last  time  how  the  argument  of  the  Phaenom- 
enologie  des  Geistes  is  related  to  the  general  problem  of 
idealism,  i.e.,  the  problem  of  defining  the  relation  be- 
tween the  external,  or  apparently  external,  world  of  ex-  ex- 
perience and  the  nature  of  the  self. 

I. 

The  interest  of  Hegel,  as  of  all  the  idealists,  is  in  de- 
fining, so  far  as  possible,  the  true  nature  of  this  relation. 
Yet  in  the  Pkaenomenologie,  which  is  an  introduction  to 
a  philosophy  and  not  a  system  of  philosophy  itself,  such 
a  deduction  of  the  true  relations  of  the  self  and  the 
world  cannot  be  completely  stated.  People  often  suppose 
that  such  a  work  as  the  Phaenomenologie  is  an  effort  to 
deduce  a  priori  both  the  forms  and  the  contents  which  the 
various  stages  of  consciousness  must  necessarily  assume. 
The  reader  who  comes  to  the  work  in  this  spirit  inev- 
itably asks,  when  Hegel  mentions  a  given  form  of  in- 
dividual, of  social,  or  of  religious  consciousness,  "Why 
must  just  this  form  of  consciousness  exist  at  all  ?  How  do 
you  know  that  such  a  form  exists  ?  Do  you  know  it  other- 

161 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
wise  than  by  your  ordinary  experience  as  a  plain  man? 
If  so,  do  you  not  pretend  to  deduce  what  you  actually 
find  as  a  fact  of  human  nature  ? "  In  answer  to  this  objec- 
tion, it  may  be  said  that  Hegel  repeatedly  and  plainly 
admits  that  in  the  course  of  the  Phaenomenologie  he  is 
not  "deducing"  the  existence  of  the  various  forms  of 
consciousness  mentioned  in  so  far  as  they  belong  to  our 
concrete  experience  of  human  life.  He  is  merely  using 
them  as  illustrations  of  the  stages  which  are  indeed 
demanded  by  the  logic  of  the  process  of  evolution  of  con- 
sciousness. At  a  given  stage  a  problem  appears.  It  is  de- 
veloped. Its  difficulties  are  made  manifest.  In  so  far  the 
student  of  the  problem  becomes  aware  of  a  certain  logical 
differentiation  which  the  various  phases  or  aspects  of  the 
problem  have  assumed  in  his  own  mind.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances he  turns  to  life  and  finds  there  a  form  of 

^  practical,  of  common-sense,  of  personal,  or  of  social 
activity  which  expresses  in  its  own  way  substantially  the 
same  problem  as  the  one  with  which  he  is  dealing.  In  the 
Phaenomenologie  Hegel  hereupon  uses  the  known  char- 
acteristics and  fortunes  of  this  type  of  human  life  or  of 
human  consciousness  as  an  illustration  of  the  present 
phase  of  his  problem.  In  this  way  one  can  understand  a 
little  better  what  at  first  sight  seems  very  mysterious, 
namely  the  relation  of  Hegel's  discussion  to  the  chron- 
ological sequence  of  the  stages  he  is  analyzing.  At  certain 
points  in  his  discussion  it  appears  as  if  he  regarded  the 
chronological  sequence  of  the  stages  of  civilization  as  cor- 
respondent to  the  logical  sequence  of  the  stages  of  the 
(  problem  that  he  is  defining.  And  to  some  extent  this  is 

J  indeed  the  case.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  cases  where 
the  chronological  sequence  of  the  stages  of  consciousness 
in  question  is  either,  to  our  minds,  entirely  indeterminate 

162 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
or  decidedly  distinct  from  the  logical  sequence  of  the 
phases  of  the  philosophical  problem  which  Hegel  is  en- 
gaged in  developing.  Thus  in  the  early  part  of  that  sec- 
tion of  the  Phaenomenologie,  entitled  Geist,  where  stages 
of  civilization  are  especially  in  question,  Hegel  seems  to 
be  dealing  first  with  relatively  primitive,  and  then  with 
relatively  much  more  highly  developed  types  of  civiliza- 
tion. One  is  tempted,  in  view  of  the  illustrations  used,  to 
suppose  for  a  while  that  the  chronology  of  European  his- 
tory is  in  question.  It  seems  in  consequence  purely 
fantastic  when,  in  characterizing  the  mental  life  of  what 
one  might  call  the  imperial  type,  Hegel  makes  a  rapid  ^ 
and  unexplained  transition  from  his  characterization  of 
Roman  civilization,  to  the  characterization  of  the  French 
monarchy  of  Louis  XIV.  The  uninitiated  reader  asks  at 
once,  "What  has  become  of  the  Middle  Ages?"  Again,  im 
the  earlier  portions  of  the  Phaenomenologie  where  Hegel 
is  treating  rather  types  of  individuals  than  types  of  so- 
ciety, a  series  of  phases  of  consciousness  appears,  con- 
taining, for  instance,  the  consciousness  of  a  savage  at  war 
with  his  fellow  men ;  the  consciousness  of  the  stoic  inde- 
pendent of  all  fortunes ;  the  consciousness  of  the  religious 
devotee,  shut  up  in  his  cell  and  longing  for  a  mystical 
union  with  a  wholly  indefinite  and  perfect  deity;  thei^- 
consciousness  of  a  Faust,  as  the  early  Faust  fragment 
of  Goethe  defined  that  consciousness;  the  consciousness 
of  a  knight-errant,  a  sort  of  Don  Quixote  seeking  in  ad- 
venturous contest  with  the  world  his  self-possession ;  the 
consciousness  of  a  group  of  pedantic  scholars  criticizing 
one  another's  productions — in  brief,  we  find  a  series  of 
forms  of  personality  which  seems  to  be  the  result  of  a  de- 
cidedly  arbitrary,  although  interesting,  selection.  One  * 
asks  at  once  as  to  the  chronological  relations  of  these 

163 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
forms  of  personality.  One  feels  that  they  do  np.t  belong  to 
any  one  determinate  temporal  sequence.  Yet  the  corre- 
spondence between  the  evolution  of  humanity  and  the 
logical  evolution  of  a  problem  seems  to  be  more  or  less  a 
guiding  principle  with  Hegel.  The  result,  however,  is 
baffling. 

All  these  varieties  of  expression  are  to  be  understood 
in  the  light  of  the  consideration  just  mentioned.  The 
Phaenomenologie  is  not  responsible  for  the  philosophy 
of  history.  It  is  responsible  for  the  use  of  historical  types 
as  illustration  of  stages  .of  the  evolution  of  a  rational jMm- 
sciousness.  It  finds  the  illustrations  empirically.  It  ana- 
lyzes them  logically.  It  is  led  by  the  analysis  from  stage 
to  stage. 

But  there  are  cases  where  the  chronological  relation 
itself  becomes  important;  in  such  instances  Hegel  him- 
self is  likely  to  inform  us  explicitly  that  this  is  so. 
There  are  connected  historical  processes  whose  connec- 
tion Hegel  views  as  mainly  a  logical  one.  Such  instances 
Hegel  finds  in  the  inevitable  decay  of  small  states,  a 
decay  which  he  believes  to  be  due  to  the  inner  logical 
instability  of  their  distinctly  local  or  essentially  provin- 
-  cial  ideals.  A  world  of  small  communities  must  give 
place,  for  reasons  which  Hegel  regards  as  logical,  to  a 
world  of  an  imperial  type  of  social  unity.  And  yet,  Hegel 
himself  views  the  process  whereby  this  is  accomplished 
as  a  process  involving  wars  whose  outcome  he  declares  to 
be  accidental — that  is,  these  wars,  whereby  the  imperial 
unity  is  indeed  attained,  are  not  determined  in  their 
details  by  the  logical  process  in  question.  Another  in- 
stance, very  important  for  the  general  structure  of  the 
Phaenomenologie,  is  furnished  by  the  dissolution  of  the 
imperial  type  of  society  through  the  attainment  of 

164 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
individual  independence  on  the  part  of  the  citizens, 
and  a  consequent  rebellion  against  authority,  whose  di- 
rect result  tends  to  be  anarchy.  Hegel,  writing  as  he  does 
in  a  period  immediately  subsequent  to  the  French  Revo- 
lution and  at  a  time  when  the  future  constitution  of 
Europe  was  entirely  doubtful,  speaks  of  this  process  not 
as  one  that  constitutes  the  ultimate  goal  of  human  civili- 
zation but  as  one  which  to  his  mind  is  presumably  des- 
tined to  occur  in  a  rhythmic  way  again  and  again  in  the 
course  of  human  history.  Thus  provincialism  leads  to 
imperialism,  imperialism  to  culture,  and  culture  to  a 
highly  sophisticated  individualism.  Individualism,  let 
loose,  leads  then  to  a  temporary  anarchy.  And  so,  as 
Hegel  in  this  book  views  the  philosophy  of  social  proc- 
esses, the  social  mind  returns,  through  tlie  condition  of 
anarchy  which  is  a  sort  of  temporary  relapse  into  sav- 
agery to  the  beginning  of  its  life,  and  repeats,  possibly  in 
an  almost  circular_wa^,  the  stages  of  its  merely  political  " 
self-expression.  The  logical  lesson  seems,  so  far,  to  be 
that,  as  Hegel  conceived  the  matter  in  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century?  genuine  stability,  rational 
unity  of  consciousness,  cannot  be  achieved  upon  a  purely 
social  basis.  The  logical  outcome  of  the  failure  of  man 
to  give  to  the  social  order  a  permanent  structure  in  the 
visible  world  is,  in  the  Phaenomenologie,  the'transition  to 
the  religious,  and  through  the  religious,  to  the  philosoph- 
ical consciousness. 

The  evolution  of  religion  itself  Hegel  defines  in  the 
closing  section  of  the  book  as  .somewhat  parallel  to  the 
social  evolution.  Only  the  chronological  evolution  of  re- 
ligion is  of  another  type.  As  a  higher  manifestation  of 
the  Geist,  religion  develops  not  in  a  circle,  with  a  return 
to  essentially  the  same  anarchy  as  that  with  which  it 

165 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
begins,  but  rather  in  a  straight  line,  from  a  vague  recog- 
nition of  the  divine  in  the  powers  of  nature  to  the  entire 
identification  of  the  divine  principle  with  the  principle  of 
a  rational  self -consciousness.  The  stages  of  the  religious 
consciousness  are  at  once  logical  and  chronological,  al- 
though it  must  here  also  be  said  that,  in  his  sketch,  Hegel 
considers  only  what  he  regards  as  the  essential  forms  of 
religion,  and  does  not  attempt  to  predetermine  such  proc- 
esses as  are  exemplified  by  the  long  struggle  amongst 
various  religions,  as  for  instance  by  the  struggle  between 
Mohammedanism  and  Christianity.  Such  matters  he  en- 
tirely ignores  in  his  account  of  the  development  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  They  belong  to  those  aspects  of 
the  historical  life  which  a  complete  philosophy  of  his- 
tory might  have  to  consider,  but  which  the  Phaenome- 
nologie,  which  is  merely  seeking  illustrations,  may  wholly 
ignore. 

When  we  remember  that  the  entire  series  of  those 
forms  of  personal  and  social  life  which  are  depicted  in 
the  Phaenomenologie,  is  preceded,  in  the  first  part  of 
the  book,  by  an  exposition  of  a  series  of  views  of  the 
nature  of  things  which  is  distinctly  a  series  of  philosoph- 
ical theories  or  conceptions,  and  is  not  a  series 
-f — of  phases,  either  of  the  consciousness  of  persons  or  of 
the  social  consciousness,  we  see  to  how  limited  a  degree 
the  structure  of  the  Phaenomenologie  is  dependent  upon 
the  thesis  that  psychology  and  the  history  of  sociology 
can  at  once  be  interpreted  in  purely  logical  terms. 

II. 

Before  we  go  further,  it  is  worth  while  to  dwell 
upon  a  brief  sketch  of  the  relation  of  the  Phaenome- 
nologie to  the  purely  philosophical  outcome  which  Hegel 

166 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
is  seeking.  This  outcome,  as  we  know,  is  to  be  an  abso- 
lute idealism.  The  thesis  to  be  obtained  is  that  all  being, 
all  life,  all  nature,  all  personal  and  all  social  conscious- 
ness, are  expressions  of  the  meaning  of  a  single  Absolute, 
whose  experience  is  determined  by  one  universal  or  neces- 
sary ideal.  This  Absolute  is  that  which  is  directly  ex- 
pressed in  self-consciousness,  in  so  far  as  self -conscious- 
ness is  rational.  In  contrast  with  Schelling,  Hegel  lays 
much  less  stress  upon  the  physical  order  of  external 
things,  and  upon  the  unconscious  aspect  of  mental  life. 
He  constantly  recognizes  the  unconscious;  but  for  him 
unconsciousness  exists,  so  to  speak,  as  an  aspect  of  a  given 
and  concrete  conscious  process,  as  when  a  man  who  is 
busy  with  practical  life  is  unconscious  of  the  motives  that 
lie  at  the  basis  of  his  practical  activities,  or  as  when  a 
man  who  is  busy  in  a  reasoning  process  is  unconscious  of 
the  formal  logic  of  that  process.  It  is  the  destiny  of  He- 
gel's Absolute  to  be  expressed  in  conscious  form  Hegel 
insists  that  this  conscious  form  must  always  be  an  indi- 
vidual form.  The  Absolute  must  come  to  consciousness  as 
an  individual,  or  as  a  system  of  conscious  individuals. 
With  respect  to  the  question  as  to  whether  the  Absolute 
in  its  wholeness  is  a  conscious  being,  the  Phaenomenologie 
is  distinctly  ambiguous  in  its  result.  In  the  closing  — 7- 
chapter  of  the  book,  where  the  results  are  outlined, 
it  at  once  appears  that  the  Absolute  is  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  meaning  of  the  entire  human  process,  and 
that  for  the  absolute  consciousness,  the  various  Ges- 
talten,  the  various  phases  of  life,  are  in  a  genuine  mean- 
ing present,  and  present  at  once.  But  since  in  this  clos-  ^ 
ing  chapter  Hegel  is  especially  describing  the  philosoph- 
ical type  of  consciousness  itself,  there  is  at  least  a  strong 
indication  that  the  consciousness  which  he  here  attributes 

167 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
to  the  Absolute  is  identical  merely  with  the  conscious- 
ness expressed  in  philosophy.  The  prevailing  indication 
of  the  text  would  be  that  the  Absolute  comes  to  its  com- 
pletest  form  of  consciousness  in  rational  individuals  who, 
as  seers  or  as  thinkers,  become  aware  of  the  rational  na- 
ture of  the  entire  process  of  rational  life.  I  do  not  myself 
believe  that  this  view  of  the  matter  remained  for  Hegel 
final.  I  believe  that  the  sense  of  his  later  religious  phi- 
losophy, as  stated  in  his  mature  system,  demands  the 
reality  of  a  conscious  Absolute,  whose  consciousness, 
while  inclusive  of  that  of  the  rational  human  individuals 
and  in  fact  of  all  finite  beings,  is  not  identical  with  the 
mere  sum-total  of  these  individual  consciousnesses.  But 
it  is  true  that  this  result  is  not  made  manifest  in  the 
Phaenomenologie.  It  is  also  true  that  Hegel  always  ex- 
pressed himself  so  ambiguously  upon  the  subject  that  a 
well-known  difference  of  opinion  as  to  his  true  meaning 
appeared  amongst  his  followers.  This  difference  led  to 
the  division  and  ultimately  to  the  dissolution  of  the 
Hegelian  school. 

Without  attempting  to  consider  whether  the  form  in 
which  the  final  or  absolute  consciousness  gets  embodied — 
that  is,  without  attempting  to  decide  whether  it  is  God 
apart  from  the  philosopher,  who  timelessly  knows  the 
meaning  of  the  entire  process  of  the  finite  world,  or 
whether  the  divine  consciousness  appears  only  as  the 
philosophical  consciousness — we  may,  in  any  case,  char- 
acterize the  general  nature  of  this  absolute  conscious- 
ness, or  as  Hegel  calls  it  at  the  end  of  the  Phaenome- 
nologie, the  absolutes  Wissen  as  follows:  The  Absolute '? 
whose  expression  is  the  world  and,  in  particular,  the  i 
world  of  human  life,  is  a  being  characterized  by  a  com-  \ 
plete  unity  or  harmony  of  what  one  might  call  a  theoret-  J 

168 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
ical  and  practical  consciousness.  The  theoretical  con- 
sciousness is  a  consciousness  which  views  facts  and 
endeavors  to  apprehend  them.  The  practical  conscious- 
ness is  a  consciousness  which  constructs  facts  in  accord- 
ance with  its  ideals.  The_abgolute  consciousness  is  both 
theoretical  and  practical.  Furthermore,  the  abolute  con- 
sciousness is  a  self-consciousness,  in  the  sense  which 
Schelling  had  already  tried  to  define ;  it  contains  nothing 
which  is  not  its  own  object.  It  is  nothing  which  is  not 
known  to  itself.  It  is,  therefore,  a  complete  and  organic 
union  of  a  subjective  and  of  an  objective  aspect.  Mean- 
while, as  we  now  know,  the  Hegelian  thesis  as  to  the 
structure  of  this  Absolute  Being  involves  the  recognition 
that  the  dialectical  method  tells  us  an  essential,  or  one- 
might  perhaps  say  the  essential,  truth  with  regard  to  the 
life  of  the  Absolute.  The  true  rational  self -consciousness  >"_ 
cannot  express  itself  except  in  the  form  of  a  series  of  ^vW^fPT 
complete  manifestations,  which  the  complete  conscious- 
ness interrelates,  reconciles  through  a  view  of  their  inter- 
relations, but  at  the  same  time  demands  as  its  own 
necessary  expression.  In  other  words,  an  Absolute  which 
is  not  expressed  in  finite  form  is  impossible. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  finite  expression  of  consciousness 
which  is  not  defective,  self -conflicting,  and  in  its  finitude 
self-defeating,  is  impossible.  The  only  way  in  which  the 
perfect  can  express  itself  is  through  the  imperfect.  The 
Absolute  cannot  know  itself  except  in  terms  of  a  finite  -- 
world.  Every  stage  and  phase  of  this  finite  world  must 
be  defective,  incomplete,  self-contradictory,  and  when 
temporally  viewed,  transient,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is 
finite.  To  be  sure,  throughout  the  entire  process  of  finite 
defeat  and  decay,  categories,  types,  structures,  and  what 
the  ordinary  consciousness  calls  substances,  the  natures  - — ^ 

169 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
6 — of  things  may  and  do  persist.  But  the  life  of  the  world 
is  not  in  this,  its  permanent  structure.  For  this  perma- 
nent structure  is  only  the  abstract  aspect  of  things.  The 
life  of  the  world  has  to  be  expressed  in  a  series  of  forms, 
each  of  which  is  transient,  while  the  relation  between 
them  is  the  dialectical  relation.  That  is,  each  lower  form, 
contradicting  itself,  and  in  so  far  passing  away,  finds 
what  Hegel  calls  its  truth  upon  a  higher  stage.  Yet  the 
lower  form  in  turn  can  insist  that  without  it  the  higher 
stage  would  be  logically  impossible.  Indeed  the  lower 
form  in  some  sense  persists,  preserves  its  meaning,  as  an 
organic  part  of  the  higher  form.  The  immortal  soul  of 
whatever  has  decayed  is  temporarily  preserved  in  what- 
ever succeeds  it.  Nothing  passes  away  without  leaving 
its  mark.  Thus  the  lower  forms  are  preserved  in  the 
higher,  and  at  the  same  time  keep  their  place  in  the  uni- 
verse as  a  whole  in  a  two-fold  way. 

This  is  the  two-fold  way.  The  true  view  of  life,  of  con- 
sciousness, of  history,  of  the  universe,  is  essentially  a 
non-temporal  point  of  view,  which  sees  at  once  all  these 
phases  as,  each  in  its  place,  necessary.  But  in  so  far  as 
the  phases  are  viewed  as  sequent  one  to  another  in  time, 
the  later  phases  include  the  immortal  meaning  of  the 
earlier  phases.  In  expressing  this  last  doctrine  Hegel  lays 
considerable  stress  upon  a  thesis  which  has  become  well- 
known  in  connection  with  the  later  doctrine  of  evolution. 
Every  individual  recapitulates  in  his  development  the 
phases  of  individual  life  which  have  temporally  pre- 
ceded him ;  so  that  every  individual  in  his  evolution  is  a 
mirror  of  the  entire  process  of  temporal  evolution,  up  to 
the  stage  which  he  himself  occupies.  Hegel's  theory  of 
the  Absolute  is  therefore  at  once,  and  in  a  way  which 
is  not  very  clearly  explained,  an  evolutionary  theory 

170 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

and  a  non-temporal  theory.  The  absolute  consciousness  is 
an  inclusion  in  a  single  non-temporal  consciousness  of  the 
meaning  of  all  temporal  processes.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  absolute  consciousness  is  the  goal  of  an  his- 
torical process.  Viewed  in  its  latter  aspect  the  evolution- 
ary relation  of  the  absolute  consciousness  seems  pecul- 
iarly puzzling,  for  one  inevitably  asks  Hegel,  what  is  it 
that  is  to  happen  next,  now  that  by  hypothesis  in  some 
form  the  absolute  consciousness  has  been  attained  by  the 
discovery  of  the  meaning  of  the  whole  history  ?  But  such 
questions  go  beyond  what  it  is  now  necessary  to  consider 
in  our  attempt  to  grasp  the  general  significance  of  this 
idealistic  doctrine. 

III. 

If  we  turn  to  the  study  of  the  special  phases  through 
which  consciousness  passes,  as  these  are  depicted  in  the 
Phaenomenologie,  we  find  that  the  defects  of  the  imper- 
fect phases  are  such  as,  according  to  the  doctrine,  tend  of 
themselves  to  make  clear  the  structure  of  the  absolute 
consciousness.  For  as  you  have  just  heard,  the  imperfec- 
tions of  the  finite  are  all  of  them  aspects  of  the  complete 
expression  of  the  infinite  or  perfect  self  or  Absolute. 
Let  us  enumerate,  then,  some  of  these  defects  as  they 
come  out  in  the  course  of  the  book.  The  lower  stages  of 
consciousness,  whether  individual  or  social,  may  first  be 
viewed  as  divided  into  two  types.  They  are  stages  where 
the  finite  subject,  or  knower  of  the  process  in  question, 
is  either  too  exclusively  theoretical  or  too  exclusively 
practical  in  his  attitude  towards  his  life  and  towards  his 
world.  The  Absolute  alone  combines  in  one  both  of  these 
aspects.  In  finite  life  the  too  exclusively  practical  stages 
may  be  described  as  in  general  "blind."  Those  who  are 

171 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

confined  to  these  stages  are  active,  earnest,  enthusiastic, 
fanatical,  hopeful  or  heroic.  But  they  do  not  rightfully 
grasp  what  it  is  they  are  trying  to  do.  The  too  exclu- 
sively theoretical  stages  of  consciousness  may  be  de- 
scribed as  relatively  "empty."  One  looks  on  the  world, 
but  finds  in  it  little  of  significance,  of  the  ideal,  of  the 
valuable.  One  becomes  skeptical.  One  mercilessly  exposes 
the  contradictions  of  his  own  abstract  conceptions.  One 
thinks ;  but  one  has  so  far  not  learned  to  live. 

From  another  point  of  view  the  lower  stages  are  dis- 
tinct from  the  absolute  consciousness.  The  finite  self 
finds  its  world,  whether  this  be  theoretical  or  practical, 
as  if  it  were  something  foreign.  It  fails  to  recognize  its 
own  unity  with  its  world.  Viewed  theoretically,  its  facts 
then  appear  accidental  or  unexplained,  or  as  if  due  to 
mysterious  power.  Viewed  practically,  the  world  seems  to 
the  mind  uncanny  or  hostile.  The  finite  self  is  not  at 
y  home.  It  becomes  a  wanderer.  It  sees  its  destiny  else- 
where. Perhaps  it  is  in  the  desert,  guided  only  by  the 
pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  by  fire  by  night.  Perhaps  it  is 
amongst  its  foes  who  must  be  defeated.  Perhaps,  like 
Kant,  it  is  dealing  with  the  mysterious  thing  in  itself. 
However  the  foreign  world  appears,  the  defect  is  that  the 
.self  here  does  not  recognize  this  world  as  its  own.  Or 
again,  although  on  higher  stages  it  may  be  thoroughly 
sure,  as  heroic  and  confident  reformers  are  sure,  that  its 
world  is  its  own  and  truly  belongs  to  it,  or  as  Hegel  ex- 
presses it,  is  an  sick,  the  self,  the  subject,  does  not  yet  see 
how  this  is  true.  Obviously  the  defective  stages  may  here 
be,  as  we  have  said,  either  theoretical  or  practical.  They 
may  also  be  either  individual  or  social.  Israel  in  the  wil- 
derness, which  Hegel  himself  does  not  mention  as  an  il- 
lustration, would  stand  for  a  society  whose  world  is  for- 

172 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
eign  and  whose  laws  are,  consequently,  supposed  to  be 
merely  an  ideal  legislation  for  a  future  commonwealth. 

But  the  imperfect  life  of  the  finite  self  may  be  char- 
acterized in  still  another  way.  In  general  the  finite  stages 
of  consciousness  are  those  in  which  the  subject  assumes, 
some  special  form — is,  as  Hegel  often  says,  bestimmt,  that 
is  determined  to  a  particular  way  of  living  or  of  think- 
ing. Dialectical  considerations,  then,  always  insure  that 
over  against  this  special  form  of  self -consciousness,  and 
in  so  far  contemporaneous  with  it,  there  must  be  other 
opposed  forms  of  subjectivity.  These  opposed  forms  of 
subjectivity  are,  then,  to  any  one  of  the  determinate  sub- 
jects, his  enemies.  And  so  the  world  assumes  the  type 
which  we  characterized  a  moment  ago.  From  this  point 
of  view  finite  life  appears  not  merely  as  a  passing  away 
of  each  stage  but  as  a  conflict  upon  each  stage  with  its 
own  enemies,  who  are  after  all  identical  in  nature  with 
itself. 

The  imperfect  stages  of  finite  consciousness  may  be 
also  viewed  thus :  The  self,  anticipating  its  own  absolute 
calling  and  destiny,  confident  that  it  does  know  the 
world,  may  try  to  express  the  still  unclear  consciousness 
of  its  absoluteness  either  by  affirming  itself  as  this  ego, 
this  person,  or  on  the  other  hand,  by  sacrificing  all  ita 
personality  and  surrendering  itself  to  a  vague  Absolute. 
In  other  words,  the  self  may  be  thus  a  conscious  individ- 
ualist, or  a  self -abnegating  mystic.  In  its  social  forms, 
this  opposition  between  two  imperfect  types  of  self-con- 
sciousness would  be  expressed,  for  instance,  in  anarchy 
on  the  one  hand  and  despotism  on  the  other.  That  is,  the 
theory  of  society  might  be  founded  on  the  maxim,  Every- 
one for  himself;  or  it  might  be  founded  on  the  maxim, 
All  are  subject  to  one.  Whether  individual  or  social,  this 

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LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
type  of  finite  imperfection  is  found  exemplified  all  the 
way  through  the  series  of  stages. 

If  one  contrast  with  these  types  of  imperfection  the 
type  of  an  absolute  consciousness,  of  the  consciousness 
that  views  itself,  and  rightly  views  itself,  as  world-pos- 
sessor and  as  self-possessor,  this  fulfilled  self  of  the  ab- 
solute knowledge  must,  according  to  Hegel,  possess  the 
following  characteristics : 

(1)  It  must  be  an  union  of  theoretical  and  practical 
consciousness.  It  must  see  only  what  is  its  own  deed,  and 
must  do  nothing  except  what  it  understands.  Precisely 
this,  according  to  Hegel,  is  what  occurs,  to  be  sure  in  a 
highly  abstract  form,  in  the  philosophical  theory  of  the 
categories  such  as  he  afterwards  embodied  in  his  logic. 
For  the  categories  of  the  Hegelian  logic  are  at  once  pure 
thoughts  and  pure  deeds. 

(2)  The  absolute  consciousness  must  be  that  of  a 
self  which  is  conscious  of  objects  without  going  beyond 
its  consciousness  to  find  them.   Such  a  consciousness, 
Hegel  views  as  in  the  abstract  realizable  in  a  philosoph- 
ical system. 

(3)  Somewhat  more  important  still  is  the  considera- 
tion that  the  Absolute  must  be  a  self  that  by  virtue  of  its 
inmost  principle  appears  to  itself  as  an  interrelated  unity 
of  selves  without  being  the  less  one  self.  From  this  point 
of  view  Hegel  calls  the  Absolute,  Geist.  Spirit  in  its  com- 

V  plete  sense  is  a  consciousness,  for  which  the  individual 
exists  only  in  social  manifestation  and  expression,  so 
thai  an  individual  apart  from  other  individuals  is  mean- 
ingless, and  so  that  the  relations  of  individuals  have  been 
so  completely  expressed  that  each  finds  his  being  in  all 
the  others  and  exists  in  perfect  unity  with  them.  In  his 
later  system  of  philosophy  this  view  of  the  nature  of 

174 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
spirit  lies  at  the  foundation  of  Hegel's  interpretation 
of  the  positive  theory  both  of  society  and  of  religion. 
In  the  Phaenomenologie}  the  highest  form  of  spirit 
which  appears  concretely  expressed  in  the  life  of  human- 
ity  is  the  form  assumed  by  the  church,  in  so  far  as  the 
church  is  in  possession  of  a  perfectly  rational  religion. 
The  Holy  Spirit,  identical  with  and  present  in  the  true 
life  of  the  church,  is  for  Hegel,  in  the  Phaenomenologie, 
the  living  witness  to  this  essentially  social  character  of 
the  absolute  consciousness.  That  there  appears  considera- 
ble doubt  whether  the  church  as  Hegel  conceives  it  in  this 
book  is  precisely  identical  with  any  one  of  the  forms 
which  the  Christian  church  has  assumed,  is  a  considera- 
tion which  does  not  here  further  concern  us. 

(4)  Possibly  the  most  notable  feature  of  the  abso- 
lute consciousness  is  that  which  unites  completely  finite 
and  infinite.  It  saves  its  absoluteness  by  assuming  special 
embodiments.  Hegel  always  laid  very  great  stress  upon 
this  thesis.  It  is  a  failure  to  grasp  it  which  has  so  often 
made  the  religious  conception  of  the  deity  what  Hegel 
regards  as  abstract  and  relatively  fruitless.  To  conceive 
Qod.  as  first  perfect  by  Himself  and  then,  so  to  speak, 
capriciously  creating  a  world  of  imperfection,  this  is  not 
to  conceive  the  divine  consciousness  as  it  is;  it  is  ^per- 
fect through  the  infinite  imperfections  of  its  finite  ex- 
pressions, and  through  the  fact  that  these  imperfections 
are  nevertheless  unified  in  its  complete  life.  In  the  Phae- 
nomenologie, this  view  is  repeatedly  insisted  upon,  and 
is  expressed  in  connection  with  that  phase  of  conscious- 
ness which  Hegel  calls  the  forgiveness  of  sin. 

The  thesis,  then,  in  terms  of  which  Hegel  defines  his  — ^ 
Absolute  is  that  the  absolute  self  is  aware  of  itself  as  a 
process  involving  an  inner   differentiation  into   many 

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LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
centers  of  selfhood.  Each  one  of  these  centers  of  selfhood 
is,  when  viewed  as  a  particular  center  and  taken  in  its 
finitude,  theoretically  self -contradictory,  practically  evil. 
On  the  other  hand,  each  of  these  finite  expressions 
of  the  self  is  theoretically  true,  in  so  far  as  it  represents 
the  Universal  and  is  related  thereto ;  and  it  is  practically 
justified,  in  so  far  as  it  aims  at  the  Universal  in  deed  and 
in  spirit.  In  the  religious  consciousness  of  the  forgive- 
ness of  sin,  the  Absolute,  both  as  forgiving  infinite  and 
as  forgiven  finite,  reaches  this  consciousness  in  a  form 
which  expresses  the  absolute  process.  The  absolute  proc- 
ess is,  however,  further  expressible,  apart  from  such 
images  and  allegories.  To  Hegel's  mind  it  is  inseparably 
associated  with  religion  in  the  form  of  a  philosophical  or 
scientific  consciousness.  This  philosophical  consciousness 
explains,  justifies,  makes  clear  the  existence  of  finitude, 
actuality,  imperfection,  sin.  In  the  form  of  the  dia- 
lectical method,  philosophy  emphasizes  that  contradic- 
tory and  imperfect  expression  is  necessary  to  the  life  of 
the  infinite.  In  assigning  to  each  special  category  its 
place,  exhibiting  its  defect,  and  justifying  this  defect  by 
its  place  in  the  whole  system,  philosophy  expresses  in  the 
form  of  a  rational  consciousness  what  the  religious  con- 
sciousness discovers  in  the  form  of  the  union  of  the  finite 
and  infinite  through  the  forgiveness  of  sin. 

IV. 

I  turn  from  this  indication  of  a  very  remarkable  at-, 
tempt  to  solve  the  problems  of  that  time  and  of  this  type 
of  philosophy,  to  a  mention  of  some  of  the  special  illus- 
trations. Let  us  confine  ourselves  for  the  moment  to  illus- 
tration of  individual  rather  than  of  social  types  of  con- 
sciousness. The  first  Gestalt  of  individual  consciousness 

176 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

which  Hegel  considers  is,  as  we  said  at  the  last  time,  the 
savage  consciousness  of  the  warrior,  practically  viewing 
himself  as  the  only  real  self  in  the  world,  boasting  his 
prowess  as  such,  and  consequently  seeking  to  destroy 
whatever  pretentious  fellow  may  attempt  falsely  to  be 
the  self.  It  is  because  of  the  assurance,  dim  of  course 
and  purely  practical,  on  the  part  of  each  man  that  he  is 
the  Absolute — it  is  because  of  this  that  the  universal 
war  of  all  against  all  appears.  This  primitive  state  of  uni- 
versal war,  a  conception  which  Hegel  in  so  far  accepts 
from  the  seventeenth-century  theories  of  human  nature, 
is  to  his  mind  a  phase  of  human  nature  as  transient  as  it 
is  irrational.  The  reason  for  this  transiency  lies  in  the 
fact  that  killing  a  man  proves  nothing,  except  that  the 
victor,  in  order  to  prove  himself  to  be  the  self,  needs 
still  another  man  to  kill,  and  is  therefore  essentially  a 
social  being.  Even  head  hunting  implies  dependence  upon 
one's  neighbor  who  is  good  enough  to  furnish  one  more 
head  for  the  hunter.  Let  one  note  this  element  of  mutual- 
ity, and  mere  destruction  gives  way  to  a  higher  form  of 
social  consciousness.  This  higher  stage  of  individual  self- 
realization  is  reached  in  the  still  primitive  type  of  so- 
ciety which  is  represented  by  the  master  and  his  slave. 
The  master  essentially  recognizes  that  he  needs  somebody 
else  in  order  that  this  other  may  prove  him,  the  master, 
to  be  the  self.  The  best  proof  that  I  am  the  self,  so  the 
master  thinks,  is  given  when  another  is  subject  to  my 
will.  Because  he  is  another,  and  in  so  far  a  self,  he  by  con- 
trast assures  me  of  my  own  selfhood ;  for  with  Hegel  as 
with  Schelling  individual  self-consciousness  is  a  social 
contrast  effect.  For  after  all,  I  can  only  know  myself  as 
this  individual  if  I  find  somebody  else  in  the  world,  by 
contrast  with  whom  I  recognize  who  I  am.  But  the  mas- 

177 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ter  essentially  hopes  to  prove  himself  to  be  the  true 
self,  by  making  the  slave  his  mere  organ,  the  mirror 
of  his  own  functions,  his  will  objectified.  The  world  of 
the  master  and  slave  is  therefore  explicitly  two-fold, 
and  is  not  like  the  world  of  the  head-hunting  warriors, 
the  world  in  which  each  man  lived  only  by  denying  that 
the  other  had  any  right  to  live.  The  slave,  to  be  sure,  has 
no  rights,  but  he  has  his  uses,  and  he  teaches  me,  the 
master,  that  I  am  the  self.  Unfortunately,  however,  for 
the  master,  the  master  hereby  becomes  dependent  upon 
the  slave's  work.  The  master  after  all  is  merely  the  on- 
looker and  is  self  only  so  far  as  he  sees  the  other  at  work 
for  him.  The  master's  life  is  therefore  essentially  lazy 
and  empty.  Of  the  two,  the  faithful  slave  after  all  comes 
much  nearer  to  genuine  selfhood.  For  self-consciousness 
is  practical,  is  active,  and  depends  upon  getting  control 
of  experience.  The  slave,  so  Hegel  says,  works  over,  re- 
constructs the  things  of  experience.  Therefore  by  his 
work  he,  after  all,  is  conquering  the  world  of  experi- 
ence, is  making  it  the  world  of  the  self,  is  becoming  the 
self.  The  slave  is  potentially,  or  in  embryo — is  an  sich,  as 
Hegel  would  say — the  self-respecting  man,  who  in  the 
end  must  become  justly  proud  of  the  true  mastery  that 
his  work  gives  him.  Let  this  essential  character  of  the 
slave, — the  fact  that  he,  as  worker,  is  the  only  true  man 
in  this  primitive  society — let  this  fact  come  to  his  own 
consciousness,  and  the  self  becomes  transformed  from 
slavery  to  a  higher  phase  of  consciousness.  This  new 
phase  is  represented  in  Hegel's  account,  curiously 
enough,  by  a  form  which  in  history  appears  as  a  stage 
of  philosophical  consciousness,  namely,  by  stoicism. 

Stoicism,  however,  is  here  viewed  in  its  practical,  and 
not  in  its  theoretical,  aspects  as  a  doctrine  of  the  world. 

178 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
Practically  stoicism  is  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  re- 
gards all  things  with  which  he  deals  as  necessarily  sub- 
ject to  his  own  reason,  whether  he  can  control  them  phys- 
ically or  not ;  because  he  has  found  that  the  self,  through 
its  own  rational  ideal,  needs  no  slaves,  no  conquest  at 
war,  to  prove  its  independence.  He  is  still  a  member  of 
a  society,  but  it  is  now  an  ideal  society,  composed  of 
the  stoic  and  of  his  ideal  Eeason,  his  guide.  Through 
the  discipline  of  life  the  stoic  has  become  entirely  indif- 
ferent to  whether  he  is  master  or  slave.  Whether  on  the 
throne  or  in  chains  or  in  service,  the  self,  and  just  the 
individual  self,  is  self-possessed  if  it  ideally  declares 
itself  so  to  be.  Its  social  relation,  its  relation  to  another, 
is  now  simply  its  relation  to  its  own  ideal.  I  and  my  rea- 
son constitute  the  world.  The  dialectical  defect  of  the 
stoic's  position  is  that  the  actual  world  of  the  stoic's 
life — the  world  of  activity,  of  desire,  of  interest — is 
meanwhile  going  on  in  its  own  accidental  way.  The  self  in 
order  to  attain  independence  has  resigned  all  definite 
plans  of  control  over  fortunes.  Its  concrete  life  is  there- 
fore empty.  If  it  hereupon  becomes  aware  of  this  fact  it 
turns  from  the  stoic  into  the  skeptic,  and  learns  to  doubt 
even  its  own  present  ideal.  Hegel  here  has  in  mind  the 
practical  aspect  of  the  forms  of  older  ancient  skepticism, 
which  undertook  to  retain  the  term  of  rational  self-con- 
sciousness by  a  reflection  upon  the  vanity  of  all  special 
doctrines,  ideals,  dogmas,  assurances,  concerning  com- 
mon life.  The  skeptic,  a  Diogenes  in  a  tub,  proves  his 
independence  by  destroying  convictions,  by  being  en- 
tirely indifferent  to  conventions,  by  being  essentially 
restless,  and  merely  dialectical.  The  result  of  a  thorough- 
going adoption  of  this  point  of  view  is  that  life  gets  the 
sort  of  vanity  which  has  beep  well  suggested  to  our  own 

179 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
generation  by  Fitzgerald's  wonderful  paraphrase  of  the 
Omar  Khayyam  stanzas.  The  self  is  now  indeed  free,  but 
life  is  vain;  and  the  world  has  once  more  fallen,  seem- 
ingly in  a  hopeless  way,  into  chaos.  The  Weltgeist,  rec- 
ognizing its  failure  so  far  to  win  its  own,  must  once  more 
transmigrate. 

V. 

Hereupon  Hegel  introduces  as  the  next  Gestalt  of  indi- 
vidual consciousness  a  very  remarkable  one  entitled, 
"The  Unhappy  Consciousness."  That  the  consciousness 
of  the  Omar  Khayyam^staH2as  is  unhappy  we  shall  all 
remember.  And  that  this  unhappiness  results  from  skep- 
ticism concerning  the  worth  of  every  concrete  human  life, 
is  also  obvious.  What  Hegel  notes  is  the  substantial  iden- 
tity between  a  consciousness  which  is  unhappy  for  this 
reason,  and  the  consciousness  which,  like  that  expressed 
V  in  well-known  devotional  books,  such  as  The  Imitation 
of  Christ,  or  in  the  practical  life  of  solitary  religious 
devotees  of  all  faiths,  views  its  unhappiness  as  due  to 
its  estrangement  from  a  perfection  of  life,  which  ought  to 
be  its  own  but  which  in  this  world  of  conflicting  motives 
and  transient  activities  seems  hopelessly  remote.  Whether 
you  express  your  unhappy  consciousness  in  purely  skep- 
tical or  in  devout  form,  that  is,  with  emphasis  upon  a 
cynical  o£  upon  a  mystical  attitude,  is  to  a  certain  degree 
a  matter  of  accident.  But  of  course  the  devotional  expres- 
sion is  the  deeper  one  and  looks  more  in  the  direction  in 
which  the  solution  of  the  problem,  according  to  Hegel, 
is  to  be  found.  The  unhappy  consciousness  is  therefore 
depicted  in  its  religious  form,  and  with  a  constant  use 
of  metaphors  derived  from  mediaeval  Christianity.  In 
fact  Hegel  is  here  unquestionably  treating  one  aspect  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  It  is  however  very  notable, 

180 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
and  characteristic  of  the  method  of  the  Phaenomenologie 
that  Hegel  does  not  regard  this  form  of  consciousness  as 
a  genuine  expression  of  religion  in  its  wholeness.  Reli- 
gion as  such  appears  in  the  Phaenomenologie  as  a  social 
and  not  as  an  individual  life.  The  unhappy  conscious- 
ness is  here  expressly  what  William  James  would 
call  a  variety  of  religious  experience ;  it  is  not  a  concrete 
form  of  religion.  It  may  appear  in  connection  with  the 
most  varioiis  phases  of  faith.  Viewed,  so  to  speak,  meta- 
physically, it  involves  a  distinctly  individual  interpreta- 
tion of  one's  relation  to  the  universe.  That  which  the  un- 
happy consciousness  seeks,  can  therefore  indeed  be 
named  God.  It  might  also  be  named  just  Peace,  or  the 
Ideal  Self. 

If  the  unhappy  consciousness  occurs  to  a  person  at  a 
given  phase,  he  will  of  course  use  the  terminology  of  his 
phase.  But  viewed  as  a  personal  experience,  the  unhappy 
consciousness  is  a  search  for  tranquillity,  tranquillity  won 
by  some  union  between  the  individual  and  his  own  ideal, 
between  the  lower  and  the  higher  self.  The  unhappy  con- 
sciousness, then,  is  what  James  has  described  as  the 
vague  consciousness  of  being  out  of  harmony  with  the 
higher  powers,  while  these  higher  powers  constitute, 
after  all,  very  much  what  James  characterizes  as  one's 
subliminal  self.  Hegel,  who  knows  not  the  modern  psy- 
chological vocabulary,  calls  this  subliminal  self  with 
which  the  unhappy  consciousness  is  out  of  harmony  its 
own  conceived  and  long-sought  "changeless  conscious- 
ness," or  as  he  briefly  puts  it,  "the  Changeless."  In  other 
words,  in  this  particular  incarnation,  the  Weltgeist  of 
whom  we  spoke  at  the  last  time,  is  seeking  himself 
through  some  lonely  type  of  religious  devotion.  His  world 
is  nothing  but  himself ;  and  he  is  so  far  indeed  idealistic. 

181 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
He  is  not  thinking  of  nature  or  of  fortune  or  of  other  peo- 
ple or  of  society.  He  is  brooding.  He  is  thinking  only  of 
his  own  soul  and  its  salvation.  The  divine  that  he  pursues 
is  only  the  blessed  relief  from  his  sorrow  which  he  seeks 
through  his  devotions.  In  brief,  his  religion  is  a  phantasy 
of  his  inner  consciousness,  although  his  social  relations 
to  some  real  existing  church  may  indeed  give  a  deeper 
significance  to  the  process  than  he  alone  can  recognize. 
He  himself  is  shut  up  in  the  cell  with  his  sorrows  and  his 
ideals.  But  his  difficulty  is  that  he  seems  wholly  self- 
estranged  and  foreign  to  himself. 

Hegel  depicts  this  form  of  individual  self-conscious- 
ness with  a  rather  excessive  detail  but  with  a  very  pro 
found  insight  into  the  sentimentality,  the  hopelessness, 
and  the  genuine  meaning  of  the  entire  process.  The  dia- 
lectic situation  depends  upon  the  pathetic  fact  that  the 
unhappy  consciousness  always  actually  has  its  salvation 
close  at  hand,  but  is  still  forbidden  by  its  own  presuppo- 
sitions to  accept  that  salvation.  What  it  seeks  is  nothing 
whatever  but  an  inner  self-confidence,  which  it  appar- 
ently ought  to  win  by  a  mere  resolution — an  act  of  manly 
will.  Yet,  by  hypothesis,  it  is  estranged  from  every  reso- 
lute inner  self-consciousness,  since  it  conceives  all  good 
solely  as  belonging  to  its  object,  the  Changeless.  It  prays 
to  the  Changeless,  it  longs  for  the  Changeless.  It  tries  to 
see  its  Lord  face  to  face.  But  it  always  finds,  says  Hegel, 
only  the  empty  sepulchre  whence  the  Lord  has  been 
taken  away.  "Nay,  if  I  find  the  Holy  Grail  itself,  it  too 
will  fade  and  crumble  into  dust." 

Under  these  circumstances,  however,  the  consciousness 
in  question  does  indeed  learn  to  make  a  transition,  which 
is  in  so  far  positive  and  which  is  due  to  taking  over  the 
lesson  that  the  slave  learned  from  the  master.  After  all, 

182 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 
the  very  emptiness  of  the  sepulchre  shows  that  if  the 
Lord  is  not  here  he  is  arisen.  Seek  not  the  living  among 
the  dead.  One's  seeking  must  become  an  activity; 
one  must  do  something  even  as  the  risen  Lord  does.  And 
so  the  mere  sentiment  of  the  first  stage  of  this  unhappy 
consciousness  changes  into  service.  But  the  service  is  not 
a  control  of  natural  phenomena ;  it  is  not  essentially  any 
social  business.  It  is  the  doing  of  what  is  pleasing  in  the 
sight  of  the  Changeless;  it  is  the  life  of  self-sacrifice  as 
such — the  self-chastisement  of  the  devotee.  But  once 
more  the  division  recurs.  What  is  done  is,  after  all,  but 
the  transient  deed  of  a  poor  sinner.  The  Changeless,  the 
perfect,  cannot  be  realized  hereby.  One's  work  is  but 
vain.  One's  righteousness  is  as  rags.  The  true  self  is 
not  satisfied.  One's  best  work  gets  all  its  value,  (when  it 
gets  any  value  at  all),  from  the  fact  that  the  foreign 
and  changeless  self  somehow  kindly  inspires  this  deed  / 
of  righteousness  and  permits  the  poor  sinner  to  do  some- 
thing for  his  Lord.  But  the  doer  himself  still  remains 
worthless,  whatever  he  does.  He  wishes  to  be  meet  for 
the  master's  service,  but  after  all  he  is  but  a  broken  and 
empty  vessel,  and  this  is  all  that  he  has  to  offer  for  the 
master's  service.  And  under  these  circumstances  the  only 
hope  must  indeed  come  from  the  other  side.  After 
all,  the  changeless  selt  is  concerned  in  the  salvation  of 
this  poor  sinner,  makes  its  own  sacrifice  for  him,  permits 
communion  with  the  Changeless,  gradually  sanctifies  the 
poor  soul  through  the  higher  life,  means  in  the  end  to 
bring  the  imperfect  into  union  with  itself.  Quantus  labor  * 
ne  sit  cassus,  and  so  at  length  perhaps,  through  self-dis- 
cipline, self-abnegation,  endless  self-chastisement,  the  im- 
perfect self  does  come  to  some  consciousness  of  a  new 
and  sanctified  and  redeemed  nature.  The  Changeless 

183 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
perchance  has  come  to  live  in  it.  It  has  now  become, 
through  the  ineffable  grace  of  the  Changeless,  the  instru- 
ment of  the  divine. 

But  hereupon,  for  the  unhappy  consciousness  the  en- 
emy appears,  as  Hegel  says,  in  his  worst  form.  The 
former  self-abnegation  changes  into  spiritual  pride.  The 
sanctified  person  becomes  the  home  of  vanity,  and  needs 
a  constantly  renewed  casting  down  into  the  depths  of 
humility,  until  this  very  pride  in  its  own  expertness  in 

N/  the  art  of  self-humiliation  becomes  the  inspiring  princi- 
ple of  its  life.  It  becomes  intensely  overcareful  as  to 
every  detail  of  its  fortunes  and  of  its  functions.  Its  ex- 
istence is  one  of  painful  conscientiousness,  of  fruitless 
dreariness.  And  yet,  after  all,  if  it  could  only  reflect,  it 
would  see  that  through  its  despair  it  .has  already  found 
the  essential  experience.  For  what  it  has  essentially  dis- 
covered is  that  if  a  man  will  reasonably  submit  himself 
to  the  conditions  of  the  true  life,  he  must  attain,  through 
activity,  a  genuine  unity  with  his  ideal  world.  In  other 
words,  the  unhappy  consciousness  is  simply  seeking  in  its 
lonesomeness  what  the  civilized  man  is  finding  in  his  con- 

^  crete  relations,  not  to  the  enemies  whom  he  kills,  nor  to 
the  slaves  whom  he  controls,  nor  to  the  abstract  ideals 
that  he  follows,  but  to  the  humane  life  in  which  he  finds 
his  place.  Whenever  consciousness  reaches,  says  Hegel,  a 
stage  of  genuine  reason,  it  becomes  sure  of  itself  and  rests 
from  the  vain  labors  of  all  this  suspicious  self-question- 
ing. It  finds  indeed  a  new  field  of  work,  and  of  intense 

,\  and  absorbing  work,  but  not  the  labor  of  conquering  these 
fantastic  spiritual  foes.  It  becomes  assured  that  the  prac- 
tically humane  life  is,  in  meaning,  one  with  the  whole  of 
reality.  The  unhappy  consciousness,  however ,  cai  in  and 
for  itself  never  recognize  this  fact.  It  will  not  wa\e  up  to 

184 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

its  own  truth.  To  quote  Hegel 's  words : ' '  Bather  does  this 
consciousness  only  hear  as  if  spoken  by  some  meditating 
voice,  the  sole,  fragile  assurance  that  its  own  grief  is  in 
the  yet  hidden  truth  of  the  matter  the  very  reverse,  <:Wv^//^ 
namely,  its  salvation;  the  bliss  of  an  activity  which  re- 
joices in  its  tasks.  This  voice  of  the  spirit  tells  the  un- 
happy consciousness  in  its  own  way  that  the  miserable 
deeds  of  the  poor  sinner  are  in  some  hidden  truth  the  ' 
perfect  work,  and  the  real  meaning  of  this  assurance  is 
that  only  what  is  done  by  an  individual  is  or  can  be  a 
deed.  But  for  the  unhappy  consciousness  both  activity 
and  its  own  actual  deeds  remain  miserable.  Its  satisfac- 
tion is  its  sorrow  and  the  freedom  from  this  sorrow  in  a 
positive  joy  it  looks  for  in  another  world,  in  heaven.  But  -1 
this  other  world,  where  its  activity  and  being  are  to  be- 
come and  to  remain  its  own  real  activity  and  being — 
what  is  this  world  but  the  world  of  the  civilized  reason, 
where  consciousness  has  the  assurance  that  in  its  individ- 
uality it  is  and  possesses  all  reality?"*  But  this,  insists 
Hegel,  is  just  the  normal  consciousness  of  the  civilized 
man.  It  is  what  one  might  call  the  form  of  a  realistic  con- 
sciousness which  is  also  saturated  by  idealism.  And  here- 
with the  Weltgeist  transmigrates  again  into  the  new  indi- 
vidual form  of  the  man  who  says,  "The  world  is  mine  to 
live  in  and  therein  to  find  my  fulfilment  and  my  task." 
This  new  world  of  youthful  and  vigorous  consciousness, 
this  world  of  the  renaissance  of  individuality,  Hegel  calls 
the  World  of  Reason,  but  of  reason  still  in  its  individual 
rather  than  in  its  social  expression.  Thus,  Vernunft  at 
this  stage  of  the  Phaenomenologie  appears  as  equivalent 

*  See  the  author 's  translation  of  this  section  of  the  Phenome- 
nology under  the  title  ' '  The  Contrite  Consciousness, ' '  in  Benjamin 
Rand's  Modern  Classical  Philosophers,  pp.  614-628. — ED. 

185 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
to  the  civilized  consciousness  of  the  man  of  the  world  or, 
-V-at  any  rate,  of  the  man  who  has  a  world  of  his  own.  The 
devotee  as  an  individual  may  always  remain  in  his 
cloister,  but  the  Weltgeist  transmigrating  awakens  in 
new  individual  form,  as  the  Faust  transformed  by  magic 
into  the  youthful  seeker  of  good  fortune,  as  the  vigorous 
sentimentalist  who  no  longer  broods  but  passionately 
demands  satisfaction  of  life,  as  the  reformer  who  will 
transform  all  things  into  the  likeness  of  his  own  ideal; 
in  brief,  as  a  man  who  has  found  his  task  and  to  whom 
the  world  is  in  the  larger  sense  his  business. 


186 


LECTURE  VIII. 

THE  DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS  OF  HEGEL'S 
PHAENOMENOLOGIE. 

A  the  last  lecture,  in  following  Hegel's  Phae- 
nomenologie  des  Geistes,  we  reached  the  thresh- 
old of  what  he  called  the  World  of  Reason,  that 
is,  the  world  of  organized  self-consciousness,  as  distinct 
from  elemental  or  crude  self-consciousness.  The  series  of 
types  of  human  life  and  character  in  terms  of  which 
Hegel  has  been  trying  in  the  previous  parts  of  his  book 
to  illustrate  the  logical  evolution  of  the  higher  conscious- 
ness of  humanity,  has  been  followed,  in  our  account, 
through  what  one  might  call  the  stages  of  wholly  imma- 
ture individualism.  We  now  come  to  the  portrayal  of  a 
higher  series  of  types.  I  need  not  repeat  what  I  have  said 
regarding  the  way  in  which  these  successive  stages  of  con- 
sciousness form  for  Hegel  at  once  a  logically  connected 
series  of  views  concerning  life  and  reality  and,  when 
viewed  from  another  side,  a  freely  chosen  set  of  mere 
illustrations  of  his  systematic  views.  The  curious  union 
of  technical  logic  with  free  character  study  has  been  suffi- 
ciently characterized  in  the  foregoing.  We  are  now  taking 
the  book  simply  as  we  find  it,  as  a  collection  of  portraits 
illustrating  Hegel's  idealism  and  the  steps  by  which  we 
may  approach  it.  In  this  spirit  I  continue  my  exposition. 
We  are  to  see  in  what  forms  the  self  has  to  express  itself 
in  order  to  reach  completeness  and  self-possession. 

187 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
I. 

Hegel's  Weltgeist,  in  the  successive  forms  or  finite 
lives  through  which,  in  our  former  lecture,  we  found 
him,  as  we  might  say,  transmigrating,  had  learned 
the  lesson  that  if  the  world  is  indeed  the  self,  the  self, 
on  the  other  hand,  can  never  learn  to  realize  this  very 
truth  so  long  as  it  remains  merely  an  individual  self, 
cut  off  from  organic  ties  with  a  world  of  social  life.  The 
self  needs,  demands — yes,  must  somehow  create — a 
gocial  world.  The  ideal  hero  of  Hegel 's  Phaenomenologie, 
name  him  Weltgeist,  or  call  him  by  a  more  familiar 
word,  Everyman,  has  now  learned  this  lesson  through 
l<-  the  experience  which  our  former  lecture  reported.  As  sav- 
age or,  if  you  please,  as  a  sort  of  head-hunter,  the  Welt- 
geist has  slain  his  fellows  in  order  to  prove,  through  risk 
and  through  conquest,  that  he  is  indeed  the  self.  As 
master  of  slaves,  this  same  Everyman  has  helplessly  de- 
pended upon  his  own  slaves  to  prove  him  the  only  lord 
of  all.  But  the  Weltgeist  thus  becomes  the  slave  as  well 
as  the  master.  And  as  slave,  the  same  Weltgeist  has 
learned  that  only  in  service  is  there  freedom.  As  stoic 
the  well-trained  hero,  now  utterly  indifferent  to  mere 
fortune,  has  learned  to  serve  only  his  own  empty  ideal, 
and  so  has  indeed  triumphed — but  only  in  the  void 
realm  of  mere  abstract  reasonableness,  where  after  all, 
there  is  nothing  definable  left  to  do  or  to  be.  As  skeptic, 
however,  the  same  hero  has  observed  the  vanity  of  all 
such  mere  opinion;  and  hereupon  has  been  transformed 
into  the  Unhappy  Consciousness.  In  the  dreary  and  soli- 
tary religion  of  this  type,  the  experience  of  the  merely 
unsocial  self  culminates.  For  as  lonely  religious  devotee, 
estranged  from  himself,  our  hero  has  sorrowed  through 

188 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

a  comfortless  lifetime  in  fantastic  dreams  of  an  impos- 
sible heaven  of  mere  reconciliation  and  peace. 

From  these  dreams  the  Weltgeist  now  awakens  to  a 
renewed  youth  as  the  lover  of  what  men  call  real  life. 
"The  world  is  mine,"  he  says;  "but  in  that  case  let  it 
be  indeed  a  world.  I  will  set  out  on  the  quest  for  my  OWD 
happiness,  sure  that  I  have  a  right  thereto." 

"  'Tis  life  of  which  our  nerves  are  scant— 
"  More  life  and  fuller  that  we  want." 

The  complex  structure  of  Hegel's  Phaenomenologie  is 
at  this  point  of  the  text  entangled  by  the  intro- 
duction of  a  long  critical  study  of  the  problems  of  what 
Hegel  calls  "Reason  as  Observer  of  the  World"  (Beo- 
bachtende  Vernunft).  I  shall  wholly  pass  over  this  por- 
tion of  the  text,  whose  outcome  is  the  thesis  that  the  _self, 
upon  this  stage,  can  win  unity  with  its  world  not  through 
mere  observation  but  through  action.  Hereupon  the  self 
fully  returns  to  the  pragmatic  point  of  view,  realizing 
that  it  can  win  its  self-control  and  its  unity  with  its 
world,  only  through  an  active  process. 

This  discovery  once  made,  our  hero  arises  with  some- 
thing of  the  enthusiasm  that  Tennyson's  familiar  words 
may  here  translate: 

"Eager  hearted  as  a  boy  when  first  he  leaves  his 
father's  field." 

And  so  our  hero  sets  out  to  become  a  worldling. 

II. 

The  types  of  consciousness  which  here  immediately  fol- 
low, are  depicted  with  a  marvelous  union  of  sympathetic 
detail  and  of  merciless  dialectic  peculiarly  characteris- 

189 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
tic  of  Hegel.  They  are,  one  might  say,  renaissance  types 
of  character — ethical  and  not  theoretical — interpreted, 
however,  from  the  point  of  view  which  German  roman- 
ticism had  determined.  Common  to  them  all  is  the  ex- 
plicit recognition  that  without  actively  pursuing  its  ideal 
in  a  world  of  life,  in  a  world  of  objective  fortune,  in  an 
organized  and  social  order,  the  self  cannot  win  its  own 
place,  cannot  be  a  self  at  all.  Common  to  them  all  is  the 
further  fact  that  the  self,  despite  this  recognition,  tries 
to  center  this  acknowledged  social  world  about  just  that 
individual  man  in  whom  the  self,  by  chance,  conceives 
itself,  in  each  new  incarnation,  to  be  embodied.  The 
conception  of  the  social  universe  is  thus,  each  time,  char- 
acteristically that  of  vigorous  and  ambitious  youth,  con- 
fident that  in  him  the  absolute  ideal  has  found  an  incar- 
nation, nowhere  else  attained.  "I  will  show  you,  O 
world,  that  you  are  my  own,"  he  says.  Yet  he  speaks  not 
as  the  savage.  He  is  the  civilized  youth,  with  powers, 
talents,  training,  and  a  love  of  emulation.  He  must  con- 
quer his  world;  but  he  knows  that  he  needs  a  world  to 
conquer,  and  is  so  far  dependent.  Not  the  killing  of  his 
enemies,  but  spiritual  mastery  of  the  universe  is  his  aim. 
Moreover,  he  has  behind  him,  in  essence  although  per- 
haps not  in  memory,  the  experience  of  the  unhappy  con- 
sciousness. A  merely  sentimental  and  lonely  religion 
seems  to  him  vanity.  He  is  beyond  all  that.  For 
the  time,  he  has  no  religion  whatever.  He  is  not  afraid  of 
life.  He  sets  out  to  win  and  to  enjoy.  He  recognizes  that 
the  truth  of  things  is  the  human,  the  social  truth.  But  he 
is  resolved  that  whatever  any  man  can  experience,  pos- 
sess, attain,  is  by  right  his,  so  far  as  his  ideal  demands 
such  possession. 

He  begins  this  sort  of  life  by  taking  form  as  Faust. 
190 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

The  Faust-ideal  in  question  is  due  to  so  much  of  that 
poem  as  was  at  this  time  known  to  Hegel,  and  is  not  the 
Faust-ideal  that  Goethe  later  taught  us  to  recognize  as 
his  own.  Hegel  conceives  the  Faust  of  the  poem,  as  it 
was  then  before  him,  simply  as  the  pleasure  seeker  long- 
ing for  the  time  when  he  can  say,  "0  moment  stay, 
thou  art  so  fair."  The  outcome  of  Faust's  quest,  as  far 
as  it  goes,  is  for  Hegel  the  discovery  that  the  passing  mo- 
ment will  neither  stay  nor  be  fair;  so  that  the  world 
where  one  seeks  merely  the  satisfaction  of  the  moment, 
proves  rather  to  be  the  foreign  world  of  a  blind  necessity. 
This  necessity,  in  the  guise  of  cruel  fate,  ruthlessly  de- 
stroys everything  that  has  seemed,  before  the  moment  of 
enjoyment,  so  entrancing.  Pleasure  seeking  means,  then, 
the  death  of  whatever  is  desirable  about  life ;  and  Hegel 
foresees,  for  Faust  himself,  so  far  as  just  his  incarnation 
of  the  Geist  can  go,  no  escape  from  the  fatal  circle.  At  all 
events,  the  self  is  not  to  be  found  in  this  life  of  lawless 
pursuit  of  that  momentary  control  over  life  which  is 
conceived  as  pleasure.  Such  is  Hegel's  reading  of  the 
first  part  of  Faust.  He  entitles  the  sketch,  "Pleasure  and 
Destiny." 

The  next  form  or  incarnation  of  our  hero  is  entitled, 
*  *  The  Law  of  the  Hearty' '  In  making  the  transition  from 
the  pleasure-seeking  consciousness  with  its  inevitable  dis- 
covery of  a  world  of  blind  necessity,  where  every  pleas- 
ure fades,  Hegel  shows  a  very  fine  comprehension  of 
tendencies  which  the  romantic  movement  had  already 
notably  exemplified,  and  which  it  was,  in  later  literature, 
still  further  to  exemplify.  For  the  lesson  of  the  defeated 
and  romantic  pleasure  seeker's  experience  is  indeed  not, 
in  strong  and  free  natures,  mere  repentance,  nor  yet  a 
mere  reversion  to  the  "unhappy  consciousness."  Hegel 

191 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
does  not  send  his  disillusioned  worldling  back  to  the 
cloister.  The  lesson  rather  is  the  discovery  that  the  hero 
had  been  really  seeking,  not  pleasure  as  such  at  all,  but 
something  so  potent,  so  full  of  appeal  to  his  heart  that  he 
would  be  as  ready  to  die  as  to  live  for  such  an  ideal ;  some- 
thing in  brief  that  could  fill  him  with  enthusiasm  and  de- 
votion. The  emptiness  of  the  pleasure  seeker's  outcome 
lies  simply  in  the  fact  that,  after  all,  he  has  so  far  failed 
to  find  the  "God  stronger  than  I  am,  who  coming  shall 
rule  over  me" — that  God  of  whom  Dante  tells  us  in  the 
Vita  Nuova.  Let  him  merely  define,  at  the  moment  of  his 
disillusionment,  this  his  deeper  need,  and  then  he  be- 
comes conscious  of  what  his  blundering  quest  had  all  the 
time  meant.  His  repentance  will  then  be  no  mere  terror 
of  perdition.  Years  after  the  appearance  of  the  Phae- 
nomenologie,  Byron,  who  had  tested  the  fate  of  the  pleas- 
ure seeker  to  its  end,  wrote  the  Stanzas  to  Augusta,  and 
his  lyric  after  landing  in  Greece.  Both  are  perfect  recog- 
nitions of  what  Hegel  here  calls  "the  law  of  the  heart," 
as  the  true  lesson  of  the  pleasure  seeker's  failure.  Both 
express  the  discovery  that,  after  pleasure  has  been 
drained  to  the  dregs  and  life  has  so  far  turned  into  an 
iron  necessity  of  failure,  one  still  may  rejoice  to  find  out 
that  one  had  all  the  while  simply  been  looking  for  a  way 
to  fill  one's  heart  full  of  a  sovereign  love  for  something 
worthy  of  one's  faith : 

"  And  if  dearly  that  error  hath  cost  me, 
And  more  than  I  once  could  foresee, 
I  have  found  that,  whatever  it  lost  me, 
It  could  not  deprive  me  of  thee. 
From  the  wreck  of  that  past,  which  hath  perish  'd, 
Thus  much  I  at  least  may  recall, 
192 


law  tfWSTj 

ious 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 
It  hath  taught  me  that  what  I  most  cherish 'd 
Deserved  to  be  dearest  of  all: 
In  the  desert  a  fountain  is  springing, 
In  the  wild  waste  there  still  is  a  tree, 
And  a  bird  in  the  solitude  singing, 
"Which  speaks  to  my  spirit  of  thee." 

III. 

This  transformation  of  the  love  of  pleasure  into  the 
longing  for  a  passionate  ideal,  is  something  much  deeper 
than  mere  remorse.  The  outcome  of  the  search  for  the 
satisfying  moment  of  experience  is  the  discovery  of  the 
law  that  all  passes  away  and  turns  into  the  sere  and  yel- 
low leaf.  The  lesson  is  that  if  one  adopts  this  very  " 
as  one's  own,  if  one  scorns  delight  and  lives  laborious 
days,  simply  because  all  else  fades,  while  the  inmost  de- 
sire of  the  heart  may  outlast  all  transient  contentment, 
then  one  is  nearer  to  one's  own  true  expression.  Choose 
your  ideal  then,  choose  it  anyhow,  and  be  ready  to  die 
for  it.  Then  for  the  first  time  you  learn  how  to  live.  Liv-| 
ing  means  having  something  dear  enough  to  fill  the  heart  J 

Thus  Hegel  suggests  his  diagnosis  of  the  remarkable 
transition  from  passionate  pleasure  seeking  to  vehement 
self-surrender  which  is  so  notable  in  romantic  periods 
and  in  youthful  idealism. 

The  next  type,  the  hero  of  the  "law  of  the  heart,"  here- 
upon appears  as  an  enthusiast  for  an  ideal- — what  ideal 
is  indeed  indifferent  except  so  far  as  his  own  mere  feel- 
ing is  his  guide.  His  heart  tells  him  that  this  is  his  ideal. 
He  is  ready  to  die  for  it.  That  is  enough.  He  has  found 
himself.  All  about  him,  of  course,  is  the  vain  world  of 
the  people  who  do  not  comprehend  this  ideal.  But  the 

193 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
hero  is  an  altruist.  His  heart  beats  high  for  the  good  of 
mankind.  What  mankind  needs  is  to  learn  of  his  ideal. 
He  is  therefore  a  reformer,  a  prophet  of  humanity, 
one  of  whom,  as  his  own  heart  infallibly  tells  him,  the 
world  is  not  worthy.  He  is  good  enough,  nevertheless,  to 
be  ready  to  save  this  so  far  ruined  world.  Meanwhile, 
the  ideal  for  which  he  fights  is  always  essentially  senti- 
mental. If  as  reformer  he  wins  his  triumph,  he  instantly 
discovers  that  whatever  has  won  the  day  has  by  the  very 
triumph  been  turned  into  mere  worldliness;  and  he  is 
even  more  disposed  to  quarrel  with  his  party,  so  soon  as 
it  has  triumphed,  than  he  had  been  to  condemn  the  base 
world  as  it  was  before  he  came  into  it.  Nothing,  therefore, 
is  less  to  his  mind  than  a  cause  which  has  triumphed; 
such  a  cause  is  no  longer  a  mere  affair  of  the  heart.  The 
romantic  reformer  lives  by  having  a  base  world  to  con- 
demn. He  would  indeed  reform  it ;  but  woe  unto  the  social 
order  that  chances  to  accept  his  reform.  His  heart  is  too 
pure  to  be  content  with  such  humdrum  worldly  actuality. 
He  rages  because  the  base  world  has  profaned  the  ideal 
even  through  the  very  act  of  pretending  to  accept  it. 

Since  in  a  similar  fashion  all  other  hearts,  if  once 
awakened,  are  laws  unto  themselves,  the  realm  of  such  a 
company  of  romantic  reformers  is  a  renewal,  upon  a 
higher  level,  of  the  primal  warfare  of  all  against  all.  It 
is  a  world  of  mad  prophets,  each  the  fool  of  his  own  van- 
ity. In  depicting  this  type,  Hegel  has  in  mind  the  speech 
of  the  hero  of  Schiller's  Robbers,  and  the  enthusiasts  of 
storm  and  stress  literature  generally,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  humanitarian  in  their  pretences  and  anarchical  in 
their  conflict . J5ith.illfi.j>reyailing  social  order.  The  por- 
trayal of  the  type  is  merciless  in  its~<dialectic,  but  is  not 
without  its  obvious  justice. 

194 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 
IV. 

To  the  tragi-comedy  of  the  purely  sentimental  reform- 
ers, succeeds  the  more  familiar  comedy  of  the  romantic 
knight-errants — the  heroes  whose  ideal  has  dropped 
the  passionate  insistence  upon  a  sentimental  dream, 
and  has  assumed  the  form  of  a  coherent  law,  but 
who  still  center  this  law  of  the  world  about  their  own 
noble  personalities.  Here,  as  is  obvious,  Hegel  is  dealing 
with  that  type  whose  dialectic  Cervantes  had  long  since 
rendered  classic.  It  is  necessary  for  Hegel,  however,  to 
incorporate  a  representative  of  this  type  into  his  own 
series;  and  he  does  so  very  briefly,  but  effectively.  The 
hero  of  knightly  virtues  here  depicted  is  no  longer 
a  mediaeval  figure,  and  the  portrait  is  not  directly  that 
of  Don  Quixote.  The  illusions  in  question  take  only  such 
forms  as  belong  to  Hegel's  own  age.  In  essence,  the  at- 
titude depicted  is  that  of  the  ideally  minded  youthful 
altruist  whose  knightly  quest  is  directed  against  the  law- 
less selfishness  which,  in  his  opinion,  infests  the  social 
order,  while  the  knightly  character  itself  takes  pride,  not 
indeed  like  the  foregoing  type,  in  mere  chance  enthusi- 
asms, but  in  its  steadily  loyal  attitude  of  self-sacrifice 
for  its  chivalrous  purpose.  It  defines  its  ideal  as  virtue 
in  the  abstract,  as  nobility  of  character.  All  of  its  natural 
powers  are  to  be  disciplined,  not  for  the  sake  of  enforc- 
ing the  law  of  the  heart,  but  for  the  sake  of  overcoming 
the  wicked  ways  of  the  world  where  selfishness  reigns. 
The  natural  man  is  now  denounced  as  a  brutish  self- 
seeker.  The  world  as  it  is  contains  giants  of  wrongdoing, 
and  is  given  over  to  selfishness.  The  knightly  soul  is  op- 
posed to  the  natural  man  and  fights  for  the  cause  of  an 
ideal  chivalry  whose  essence  consists  in  loving  and  serv- 

195 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ing  virtue  and  surrendering  one's  self  with  no  more  or- 
ganized purpose  than  that  of  such  self-surrender. 

The  admirable  personal  intents  of  such  an  idealist  do 
not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that,  as  Hegel  points  out,  his 
powers  and  his  culture  are  due  to  the  very  society  that 
his  lofty  conceit  affects  to  despise.  And  since  in  his  plans 
he  now  lacks  any  definite  relation  to  the  objective  de- 
mands of  this  real  social  order,  since  it  is  not  good  citi- 
zenship which  guides  his  activities,  but  simply  his  own 
impression  regarding  the  nobility  of  his  character  and 
aims,  his  ideal  has  to  remain  not  merely  unpractical,  but 
empty.  He  lives  in  phrases  and  illusions.  As  against  his 
boasts,  it  is  the  selfish  world  after  all  that,  in  its  own 
crude  way,  accomplishes  whatever  social  good  is  accom- 
plished at  all. 

V. 

The  result  of  the  dialectic  of  these  successive  types  is 
so  far  obvious.  The  individual  in  order  to  come  to  him- 
self needs  a  world,  and  a  social  one,  to  win  over  and  to 
control.  But  control  can  only  be  won  through  self-sur- 
render. Hence  the  individual  needs  a  world  where  he 
may  find  something  to  which  he  can  devote  himself  as 
to  an  objective  truth — something  quite  definite  which  he 
can  serve  unhesitatingly  so  as  to  be  free  from  the  queru- 
lousness  of  the  restless  reformer,  and  free  too  from 
the  idle  vanity  of  the  knight-errant.  The  true  world 
must  become  for  me  the  realm  of  my  life  task,  of  my 
work,  of  my  objectively  definite  and  absorbing  pursuit. 
Only  so  can  I  truly  come  to  myself  and  to  my  own.  Is 
not  then,  after  all,  the  artist  who  pursues  art  for  art's 
sake,  the  scholar,  who  loves  learning  just  for  learning's 
sake,  the  man,  in  brief,  who  is  completely  given  over  to  a 
laborious  calling  just  for  the  sake  of  the  absorbing  con- 

196 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

sciousness  which  accompanies  this  calling — is  not  such  a 
man,  at  length,  in  possession  of  the  true  form  of  self -con- 
sciousness? My  work,  my  calling,  my  life  task — this  I 
pursue  not  because  I  wish  for  mere  pleasure,  but  because 
I  love  the  work.  Moreover,  this  task  is  indeed  the  law  of 
my  heart;  but  I  do  not  seek  to  impose  it  upon  all  other 
men.  I  leave  them  free  to  choose  their  life  tasks.  Nor  is 
my  calling  merely  an  object  of  sentiment.  I  view  it  as  a 
worthy  mode  of  self-expression.  Meanwhile,  unlike  the 
knight-errant,  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  the  one  virtuous 
representative  of  my  calling,  who  as  such  is  reforming 
the  base  world.  No,  in  my  calling,  I  have  my  colleagues 
who  work  with  me  in  a  common  cause.  This  cause  (die 
Sache )  is  ours.  Here,  then,  are  the  conditions  of  an  ideal 
society.  Here  subject  and  object  are  at  least,  it  might 
seem,  upon  equal  terms.  We  who  pursue  a  common  call- 
ing exist  as.  servants  of  our  Sadie;  and  this  cause — our 
science,  our  art,  our  learning,  our  creative  process,  what- 
ever it  be — this  exists  by  virtue  of  our  choice,  and  of  our 
work.  Meanwhile,  if  this  is  not  your  calling,  you  must  not 
ask,  as  from  without,  what  this  "cause"  of  ours  is  good 
for.  Our  art  is  just  for  art's  sake ;  our  learning  is  its  own 
reward.  Our  cause  is  indeed  objective;  we  serve  it;  we 
sacrifice  for  it ;  but  it  is  its  own  excuse  for  being.  If  you 
want  to  attain  the  right  type  of  self-consciousness,  find 
such  a  cause,  make  it  yours,  and  then  serve  it. 

The  phase  of  consciousness  suggested  lies  very  near 
to  the  mind  of  a  scholar  such  as  Hegel ;  near  also  to  the 
thoughts  of  the  artists  and  the  students  of  a  time  such 
as  his.  Beyond  pleasure  seeking,  beyond  the  sentimental 
scheming  of  reforms,  beyond  youthful  knight-errantry, 
lies  a  type  of  self-consciousness  with  which  many  a 
strong  man  has  long  been  content.  This  type  involves  a 

197 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
calm  love  of  a  definite  calling,  which  seems  to  be  pursued 
unquestioningly  and  just  for  its  own  sake.  What  does 
one  want,  after  all,  but  just  an  absorbing  life  task  ?  So  to 
live  is  to  find  the  self  which  is  also  an  universe. 

In  explaining  the  dialectic  of  this  type  of  conscious- 
ness Hegel  shows  all  the  skill  of  the  reflective  man  who 
is  confessing  the  only  too  natural  defects  incident  to  his 
own  calling.  And  no  reader  can  doubt  the  thoroughness 
of  the  confession.  For  no  sentimental  dreamer  of  the 
foregoing  romantic  types  fares  worse  under  Hegel's  dis- 
section than  does  the  type  of  the  scholar  or  the  artist 
who  defines  the  self  in  terms  of  the  "cause,"  and  who 
thereupon  can  say  nothing  better  of  the  "cause"  than 
that  it  is  its  own  excuse  for  being.  Such  an  ideal  Hegel 
finds  wholly  accidental  and  capricious,  and  shrewdly 
notes  that  what  the  scholars  and  artists  in  question  really 
mean  by  their  pretended  devotion  to  the  "cause"  is  that 
they  are  fond  of  displaying  their  wits  to  one  another 
and  of  showing  their  paces  and  of  winning  applause,  and 
with  a  touch  of  the  old  savagery  about  them  are  also 
fond  of  expressing  contempt  for  the  failures  of  other 
men.  The  actual  behavior  of  these  devotees  of  the 
cause  is  described  in  paragraphs  of  a  character- 
istically dry  humor.  The  learned  author  or  the  con- 
fident artist,  vain  of  his  toilsome  scholarly  or  creative 
task,  first  puts  all  his  powers  into  it ;  then  feels  sure,  in 
his  own  mind,  that  this  is  indeed  a  great  piece  of  work, 
since,  after  all,  the  self  is  in  it;  and  hereupon,  with  an 
elaborate  display  of  modesty,  he  solemnly  explains  in  his 
preface  or  in  letters  to  his  friends  that  he  knows  how 
little  he  has  done.  Yes,  he  has  done  a  mere  nothing.  He 
has  only  wished  to  show,  by  his  poor  essays,  his  devotion 
to  the  cause,  of  which  he  is  but  the  humblest  of  servants. 

198 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

Such  is  his  honorable  way  of  appearing  objective.  Here- 
upon, like  flies,  the  critics  settle  upon  the  now  publicly 
visible  work.  They  too  protest  their  devotion  to  the  cause. 
Wholly  in  its  service,  and  of  course  not  because  of  their 
condescending  vanity,  nor  yet  because  of  their  own  ill- 
suppressed  but  malicious  glee,  they  either  loftily  praise 
and  approve,  or  else,  if  they  can,  tear  to  pieces  the 
worthy  or  unworthy  work.  Of  course  the  author  listens 
disenchanted.  And  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  those  who 
have  no  justification  for  their  life  task  except  that  it  is 
a  life  task.  What  they  are  busy  in  pleasing,  is  their  own 
vanity.  They  merely  call  it  an  objective  task. 

Hegel 's  title,  prefixed  to  his  sketch  of  this  type  of  con- 
sciousness, sufficiently  summarizes  his  view.  It  runs: 
"Das  geistige  Thierreich  und  der  Betrug,  oder  die  Sache 
selbst."  We  may  freely  translate:  "The  Intellectual 
Animals  and  their  Humbug;  or  the  Service  of  the 
Cause."  Few  more  merciless  sketches  of  the  pedantry 
and  hypocrisy  that  may  take  on  the  name  of  objectivity 
and  of  devotion,  have  ever  been  written.  For  Hegel  had 
grown  up  im  geistigen  Thierreich  amongst  the  intellec- 
tual animals  and  he  knew  them  to  the  core. 

VI. 

Yet,  once  again,  the  result  of  this  dialectic  is  positive. 
The  ideal  of  the  intellectual  animals  is  in  fact  a  sound 
one.  Their  hypocrisy  lies  merely  in  pretending  to  have 
found  this  ideal  in  art  for  art's  sake,  or  in  learning  for 
learning's  sake.  Suppose  that  there  indeed  is  a  task 
which  is  not  arbitrarily  selected  by  me  as  my  task,  and 
then  hypocritically  treated  as  if  it  were  the  universal 
task  which  I  impersonally  serve.  Suppose  that  the  gen- 
uine task  is  one  forced  upon  us  all  by  our  common  nat- 

199 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
ural  and  social  needs.  This  then  will  be  "die  Sactie,"  our 
work,  our  life,  whether  we  individually  admit  the  fact 
or  no.  Against  the  magnitude  of  this  common  task,  the 
individual's  service  will  then  indeed  be  as  nothing,  and 
the  individual,  when  he  notes  this,  may  frankly  admit 
the  fact  without  any  hypocritical  posing.  On  the  other 
hand,  this  task  will  furnish  for  each  man  his  only  pos- 
sible true  self-expression  in  terms  of  human  action.  Is 
there  such  a  task,  such  a  Sache  f  Hegel  replies  in  effect : 
Yes,  the  consciousness  of  a  free  people,  of  a  Volk,  of  an 
organized  social  order,  will  constitute  such  an  expression 
of  selfhood.  To  each  of  its  loyal  citizens,  the  state  whose 
life  is  that  of  such  a  people  will  be  his  objective  self. 
This  his  true  self  then  assigns  to  the  individual  his  pri- 
vate task,  his  true  cause,  gives  dignity  and  meaning  to 
his  personal  virtues,  fills  his  heart  with  a  patriotic  ideal, 
and  secures  him  the  satisfactions  of  his  natural  life.  Here 
at  last  in  this  consciousness  of  a  free  people,  we  have — 
no  longer  crude  self -consciousness,  no  longer  lonely  seek- 
ing of  impossible  ideals,  and  no  longer  the  centering  of 
the  world  about  the  demands  of  any  one  individual.  In 
this  consciousness  of  a  free  people  each  individual  self 
is  in  unity  with  the  spirit  of  the  entire  community.  And 
herewith  the  world  of  the  Geist  begins.  All  the  previous 
forms  were  abstractions,  fragments  of  life,  bits  of  self- 
hood. In  history  they  appear  as  mere  differentiations 
within  some  form  of  the  life  of  the  Geist — as  mere 
phases  of  individual  life  which  involve,  as  it  were,  a  sleep 
and  a  forgetting  of  the  unity  upon  which  all  individual 
life  is  based.  An  organized  social  order  is  the  self  for 
each  one  of  its  loyal  subjects.  The  truth  of  the  individual 
is  the  consciousness  of  the  people  to  which  he  loyally 
belongs. 

200 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

The  pathos  of  these  words,  written  as  they  were  at  a 
moment  when  Hegel  himself  was  very  much  a  man  with- 
out a  country  and  when  already  the  invader's  heel  was 
on  the  soil  of  Germany,  suggests  to  us  that  the  Geist  also, 
thus  hopefully  introduced,  is  to  have  its  dialectical  ex- 
periences, and  its  forms  of  disillusionment.  As  a  fact,  the 
tale  of  the  Geist  is  more  of  a  tragedy  than  is  that  of  the 
individual  life. 

The  first  type  of  the  Geist  is  that  of  the  small  but 
already  highfy  developed  state,  as  was,  for  instance,  the 
ideal  Grecian  commonwealth — so  small  that  its  citizens 

_^1*x_- ^~- •5Si ^-^_->^ — — — 1v_ ^X^^ ^-V^, -- 

feel  near  to  one  another,  while  this  state  is  so  highly  de- 
veloped as  to  value  its  own  freedom  and  to  demand  defi- 
nite loyalty  from  every  subject. 

The  problem  of  such  a  social  order,  as  of  every  social 
order,  is  of  course  the  maintaining  of  the  equilibrium 
between  individual  rights  and  social  duties.  This  is  for 
Hegel  simply  the  problem  of  subject  and  object  in  its 
social  form.  The  commonwealth  is  conscious  in  and 
through  its  individuals ;  but  they,  as  loyal  subjects,  view 
themselves  as  its  expression  and  instrument.  So  each  of 
the  two  members  of  this  relation,  the  consciousness  of  the 
commonwealth  and  that  of  the  individual,  may  in  turn 
be  regarded  as  the  true  subject  and  as  the  true  object  of 
the  social  world.  As  in  Schelling's  doctrine  of  the  self, 
however,  the  relation  involved  proves  to  be  unsymmetri- 
cal  and  hence,  in  each  finite  form,  unstable. 

In  the  ideal  small  commonwealth,  however,  the  prob- 
lem as  to  the  relation  between  the  individual  and  the 
social  order  does  not  yet  appear  as  a  direct  conflict  be- 
tween the  personal  rights  of  one  who  is  in  the  modern 
sense  a  free  citizen,  and  the  public  rights  of  the  govern- 
ment. For  in  this  stage  the  loyal  individual  is,  in  ideal 

201 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
at  least,  essentially  devoted  to  the  filling  of  his  social 
station  whatever  that  is.  He  has  conscious  rights  only  by 
virtue  of  this  station.  The  modern  notion  of  individual 
rights  is  a  much  later  evolution.  Hegel  uses  as  his  illus- 
tration of  this  form  of  social  consciousness,  not 
the  literal  history  of  the  Grecian  commonwealth  (for 
that  is  clouded,  he  thinks,  by  accidental  motives),  but 
rather  the  ideal  view  of  a  commonwealth  which  he  finds 
presented  in  the  Greek  heroic  tragedy — especially  in  the 
CEdipus  trilogy  of  Sophocles.  It  is  notable  that  at  the 
moment  we  are  reminded  of  an  essentially  analogous  sit- 
uation by  what  we  nowadays  hear  of  the  social  ideals  of 
old  Japan,*  where  individual  rights  were  apparently 
conceived  wholly  in  terms  of  social  station. 

In  such  an  ideal  commonwealth — the  ideal  heroic  social 
order  of  the  Greek  tragedy — or  the  analogous  ideal  of 
old  Japan,  the  antithesis  between  the  individual  and  the 
social  order  is  represented  by  the  conflict  between  family 
piety  and  the  demands  of  the  existing  rulers  of  the  state. 
In  other  words,  the  social  order  here  exists  in  a  two-fold 
form,  as  the  family  and  as  the  government.  The  family 
interest  here  centers,  however,  about  its  devotion  to  its 
dead.  The  individual,  while  living,  is  friend  or  foe  of  the 
state,  and  has  value  for  society  only  as  such.  But  as  a 
dead  member  of  the  family,  the  individual  has  absolute 
rights,  which  are  recognized  through  funeral  ceremonies 
and  through  ancestor  worship.  Hence  the  possibility  of  a 
conflict  between  family  piety  and  the  demands  of  the 
state — a  conflict  upon  which  the  tragedy  of  Antigone  is 
based.  Hegel  illustrates  the  conflict  at  length,  in  the  form 

*  A  remarkable  illustration  of  this  Gestalt  is  contained  in  ' '  The 
Story  of  the  Forty-Seven,"  in  Tales  of  Old  Japan,  collected  by 
A.  B.  Mitford.— Ed. 

202 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

which  might  appear  trivial  in  its  detail  were  not  a  reader 
of  our  day  reminded,  by  what  he  hears  of  Japan,  of  the 
manifold  ways  in  which  patriotism  and  family  honor,  the 
duties  of  daily  life  and  the  reverence  for  the  dead,  seem 
there  to  have  stood  in  various  antitheses  and  to  have 
involved  tragic  conflicts.  The  essence  of  such  tragedies, 
according  to  Hegel,  is  that  loyalty  is  divided  in  twain, 
into  loyalty  to  the  underworld — shadowy,  mysterious, 
but  absolute — and  loyalty  to  the  visible  government, 
whose  commands  are  explicit,  but  are  of  today.  The  laws 
of  the  underworld  are  socially  binding.  They  are  not 
of  today  or  of  yesterday.  No  man  knows  whence 
they  came.  But  the  visible  social  order  is  insistent  and 
authoritative.  One  can  resist  it  only  by  a  deed  which  in- 
volves fault.  That  such  fault  must  occur,  even  when  the 
wrongdoer  is  innocent  of  any  but  the  most  loyal  inten- 
tion— this  is  the  Fate  of  this  stage  of  social  conscious- 
ness, and  is  typified  by  the  tragic  fault  of  one  who,  like 
CEdipus  unwittingly  slays  his  father,  and  weds  his  own 
mother,  but  who  even  thereby  becomes  the  ruler  of  the 
state ;  and  is  again  typified  by  the  deliberate  yet  fatally 
necessary  fault  of  Antigone,  who  with  womanly  piety 
takes  sides  with  the  underworld  and  performs  her  duty 
to  her  dead  brother  in  defiance  of  the  will  of  the  ruler. 

In  brief,  the  ideal  commonwealth  lives  through  an  un- 
consciousness as  to  what  its  own  inner  doubleness  of  loy- 
alty means.  It  is  unstable.  Its  only  resource  is  in  exercis- 
ing its  loyalty  through  active  conflict  with  other  states. 
But  warfare  breaks  down  the  simpler  form  of  society, 
and  inevitably  leads  over  to  the  next  great  stage  of  social 
development — the  stage  of  Imperialism. 

The  imperial  social  order  is  one  in  which  the  antithesis 
of  public  and  of  private  rights  is  explicit  and  is  delib- 

203 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
erately  adjusted  through  a  system  of  laws.  The  ideal 
purpose  of  these  laws  is  to  secure  to  every  man  his  own, 
while  the  laws  themselves  are  administered  by  a  sov- 
ereign power,  the  state.  The  state,  no  longer  a  common- 
wealth whose  dignity  is  instinctively  recognized,  a  so- 
cial order  to  which  loyalty  is  a  natural  and  inevitable 
tribute,  needs  to  be  symbolized  to  the  eyes  of  the  subject 
by  the  definite  will  of  an  individual,  the  personal  sov- 
ereign. The  first  conflict  is  now  between  his  will,  which 
as  the  will  of  an  individual  is  arbitrary,  and  his  true  vo- 
cation, which  is  to  enforce  just  laws,  securing  thereby  to 
every  subject  property  and  personal  rights.  A  second 
conflict  appears  between  his  will  and  the  equally  arbi- 
trary will  of  a  subject.  Family  piety  gives  place  to  mili- 
tarism. One  has  duties  no  longer  to  the  dead,  but  solely 
to  the  living.  Justice  is  the  ideal;  but  arbitrary  enact- 
ment is  the  fact.  And  the  conflict,  as  fatal  as  it  was  in  the 
original  social  order,  is  no  longer  the  mysterious  conflict 
between  the  underworld  and  the  visible  authorities.  It  is 
the  explicit  conflict  of  law  and  order  on  the  one  hand, 
caprice  and  accident  on  the  other.  In  this  conflict  the 
sovereign  and  his  subjects  are  equally  involved.  The 
state  is  at  once  a  necessity  and  an  oppression  to  all.  No- 
body can  either  permanently  endure  any  one  form  of 
government  or  do  without  it.  In  the  imperial  world  the 
spirit  thus  exists  estranged  from  itself,  but  bound  never- 
theless to  live  and  to  develop  through  this  estrangement. 
It  is  essentially  a  social  mind,  but  is  also  a  social  mind 
whose  expressions  are  as  unstable  as  they  are  mighty. 

The  one  resource  of  the  spirit,  under  these  conditions, 
is  self-cultivation — the  education  of  the  civilized  con- 
sciousness to  a  full  comprehension  of  the  problems  of  the 
social  order.  We  need  not  undertake  to  follow  here  the 

204 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

stages  through  which,  in  Hegel's  account,  this  education 
of  the  social  mind  passes.  The  forms  of  cultivated  in- 
dividualism heretofore  discussed  are  themselves  phases 
of  consciousness  which  arise  in  the  course  of  this  train- 
ing. The  skeptical  discovery  that  the  state  appears  to 
exist  simply  as  the  embodiment  of  the  selfish  will  of  its 
subjects,  and  that  loyal  professions  are  mere  cloaks  for 
individual  greed,  the  growth  of  a  corrupt  use  of  political 
power  even  by  virtue  of  the  growth  of  the  general  social 
intelligence,  the  conflict  of  the  social  classes — these  are 
phases  in  the  great  process  of  the  cultivation  which  the 
social  mind  gives  to  itself.  These  phases  culminate  in  the 
consciousness  which  the  Enlightenment  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  represents.  Society  is  indeed  necessary, 
but  it  exists  solely  for  the  sake  of  forming,  nourishing, 
and  cultivating,  free  individuals.  Utility  is  the  sole  test 
of  social  truth.  All  that  is  real  exists  simply  in  order  to 
make  men  happy.  Whatever  principle  underlies  this 
world-process  is  an  unknowable  Supreme  Being.  Visibly 
true  is  only  this,  that  what  tends  to  the  greatest  good  of 
the  greatest  number  of  individual  men  is  alone  justified. 
This,  then,  is  what  we  have  been  seeking.  This  is  wis- 
dom 's  last  social  word.  Away  with  all  arbitrary  laws  and 
sovereign  powers.  Away  with  loyalty  to  anything  but  the 
common  rights  of  all  men.  We  are  all  free  and  equal. 
The  Geist  has  been  transformed  into  the  multitude  of 
free  and  equal  individuals.  Let  the  people  come  to  their 
own. 

Herewith,  then,  comes  the  Revolution,  the  absolute 
freedom — and  the  Terror.  For  the  horde  of  individuals 
thus  let  loose  are  whatever  they  happen  to  be.  The  will 
of  all  is  indeed  to  be  done.  But  who  shall  do  it  ?  The  sov- 
ereign ruler?  But  the  sovereign  is  dead.  The  representa- 

205 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
lives  of  the  people?  But  these  are  now  free  individuals, 
with  no  loyalty  that  they  can  any  longer  define  in 
rational  terms.  The  only  way  for  them  to  become  con- 
scious of  the  universal  will  is  to  express  their  own  will. 
They  mean  of  course  to  do  whatever  brings  the  greatest 
happiness  to  the  greatest  number.  But  they  have  now  no 
test  of  what  is  thus  to  be  universally  useful  except  what 
is  furnished  by  the  light  of  their  own  personal  experi- 
ence. Their  subjective  decision  they  therefore  impose 
upon  all  others.  Thus  they  become  a  faction,  appear 
as  public  enemies,  and  are  overthrown.  Society  has  re- 
turned to  primitive  anarchy,  and  exists  once  more  as 
the  war  of  all  against  all. 

VII. 

The  Geist,  so  far,  has  failed  to  find,  in  the  literal  social 
world,  in  the  political  realm,  any  stable  union  of  its  sub- 
jective and  objective  aspects.  The  lesson  is,  not  that  the 
old  individualism  was  right,  but  that  the  true  social 
order  needs  a  higher  embodiment.  In  the  literal  political 
world,  the  Geist  is  indeed  able,  in  Hegel's  opinion,  to 
take  care  of  its  own,  so  far  as  the  conditions  will  permit. 
It  will  not  tolerate  anarchy.  It  will  resume  some  type  of 
relatively  stable  social  constitution.  But  here,  after  all, 
it  has  no  abiding  city. 

The  "empire  of  the  air"  remains,  however,  still  to 
conquer.  And  Hegel  hereupon  depicts,  in  terms  derived 
from  Kant  and  Fichte,  what  he  now  calls  the  moral 
theory  of  the  universe  of  the  spirit.  Upon  this  stage  the 
mind,  still  aware  of  its  essentially  social  destiny,  now 
undertakes  to  define  the  reality  as  a  certain  eternal  and 
ideal  order  which  is  valid  for  all  rational  beings — the 
city  of  God,  whose  constitution  never  passes  away.  This 

206 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

higher  and  eternal  realm,  where  the  moral  autonomy  of 
every  free  agent  is  guaranteed  even  by  virtue  of  his  ac- 
ceptance of  a  moral  law  that  he  conceives  as  binding  for 
all  rational  beings,  is  as  true  as  it  is  shadowy  and  full  of 
antitheses.  On  earth  this  ideal  moral  order  can  never  be 
realized,  for~on  earth  we  see  only  phenomena.  Only 
the  noumenal  free  moral  agents,  whose  dwelling  lies  be- 
yond time  and  space  and  beyond  phenomena,  can  create 
that  city  of  God  and  can  consciously  dwell  therein.  Yet 
we  mortals  have  worth  only  in  so  far  as,  by  our  deeds, 
we  actually  take  part  in  the  creation  of  that  perfect 
moral  order.  The  real  universe — this  moral  realm — the 
divine  order  that  lies  beyond  sense,  will  infallibly  ensure 
the  triumph  of  this  absolute  right,  whatever  we  poor  mor- 
tals do.  Yet  we  are  free  moral  agents  precisely  in  so  far  as 
the  universe  needs  our  free  and  loyal  deeds  in  order  to 
aid  in  the  triumph  of  the  right.  Unless  we  are  free  moral 
agents,  the  moral  world  has  therefore  no  meaning.  But 
if  we  are  free  agents,  then  we  can  sin  and  so  can  en- 
danger the  triumph  of  the  right. 

Such  is  a  suggestion  of  the  paradox  of  one  who  tries 
to  solve  our  problem  by  conceiving  the  true  triumph  of 
morality  as  belonging  to  a  wholly  supersensuous  world. 
The  city  of  God  is  in  vain  defined  as  merely  a  city  out 
of  sight.  The  self  in  vain  seeks  its  expression  in  a  world 
of  which,  by  hypothesis,  it  must  remain  totally  uncon- 
scious, so  long  as  it  remains  human.  The  Kantian-Fich- 
tean  moralische  Weltanschauung  is  thus  but  a  fragment 
of  the  truth,  a  higher  and  social  form  of  the  "unhappy 
consciousness,"  which  seeks  its  fulfilment  in  another 
world. 

But  still  another  form  of  this  moral  theory  of  reality 
remains.  Perhaps  the  spirit  is  actually  realized  not 

207 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
through  what  we  accomplish,  but  by  the  simple  fact  that, 
on  the  highest  levels  we  intend  to  be  rational.  Perhaps 
the  readiness  is  all.  Perhaps  the  triumph  of  the  self  in 
its  world  simply  takes  the  form  of  a  ceaseless  determina- 
tion, in  spite  of  failure  and  of  finitude,  to  aim  at  the 
highest,  at  complete  self-expression,  at  unity.  Perhaps 
the  curtain  is  the  picture ;  perhaps  the  will  is  the  deed ; 
and  perhaps  in  the  end  the  spirit,  like  a  higher  sort  of 
"intellectual  animal,"  contents  itself  with  merely  say- 
ing, "I  have  accomplished  nothing,  but  at  least  I  have 
tried  my  best. "  So  to  conceive  the  solution  is  to  take  the 
position  of  some  of  Hegel's  contemporaries,  to  whom,  as 
formerly  to  Lessing,  the  search  for  the  truth  is  all  that 
can  be  viewed  as  accessible  or  as  really  worthy.  This,  in 
fact,  is  curiously  near  to  Hegel's  own  form  of  Absolu- 
tism ;  but  is  also  curiously  remote  from  it. 

For  if,  at  last,  it  is  the  pure  intent  to  be  reasonable 
that  constitutes  reasonableness,  if  the  whole  life  of  the 
spirit,  individual  and  social,  exists  only  as  an  aim,  an 
idea,  an  attitude,  a  purpose,  still  one  has  to  remember, 
as  one  looks  back  over  this  long  story  of  error  and  de- 
feat, that  every  deed  in  which  the  self  was  expressed 
was,  in  its  measure,  a  falling  away  from  its  own  intent — 
was  an  expression  of  illusion,  was  a  finite  mistake,  and, 
if  conscious,  was  a  sin  against  the  ideal. 

What  consciousness  so  far  learns,  then,  is  that  finite 
defect,  error,  sin,  contradiction,  is  somehow  of  the  very 
nature  of  the  self,  even  when  the  self  seeks  and  means 
the  highest.  Every  effort  to  find  and  to  express  the  per- 
fect self  is  ipso  facto  a  lapse  into  imperfection.  The  pure 
self  cannot  be  expressed  without  impurity.  The  rational 
self  cannot  be  expressed  without  irrationality.  The  ab- 
solute purpose,  to  be  the  self  and  to  be  one  with  one's 

208 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

own  world,  is  realizable  only  through  a  continual  inner 
conflict  and  a  constant  transcending  of  finite  failures. 

To  see  this,  however,  is  also  to  see  that  it  is  not  in  the 
failures  themselves,  but  in  the  transcending  of  them  that 
the  true  life  of  the  spirit— of  the  self — comes  to  be  in- 
corporated. And  Hegel  here  expresses  this  by  saying  that 
it  is  not  the  consciousness  of  sin  but  the  consciousness 
of  the  forgiveness  of  sin  that  brings  us  to  the  threshold  of 
understanding  why  and  how  the  true  self  needs  to  be  ex- 
pressed, i.e.,  through  a  process  of  the  conscious  overcom- 
ing of  the  defects  of  its  own  stages  of  embodiment, 
through  a  continual  conquest  over  self-estrangements 
that  are  meanwhile  inevitable,  but  never  final. 

To  give  this  very  view  of  the  nature  of  the  self,  and 
of  the  relation  between  perfection  and  imperfection, 
finitude  and  the  infinite — to  give  this  view  a  genuine 
meaning,  we  must  turn  to  that  still  higher  form  of  the 
social  consciousness  which  is  historically  embodied  in 
religion. 

VIII. 

Religion  may  be  defined,  so  Hegel  says,  as  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  Absolute  Being.  In  other  words  re- 
ligion is  not,  like  the  foregoing,  the  effort  of  one  who  be- 
ginning with  his  own  individual  self-consciousness  as  the 
center  of  his  universe,  tries  to  find  the  place  of  this  in- 
dividual self  in  his  world.  Religion  is  rather  the  con- 
sciousness which  is  seeking  to  express  what  the  Absolute 
Being,  the  universe,  really  is,  although,  to  be  sure,  re- 
ligion is  inevitably  an  interpretation  of  the  Absolute 
Being  as  seen  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  inquiring 
self. 

In  history,  religion  has  appeared  as  an  attitude 
of  the  social  consciousness  towards  the  world.  Religion 

209 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
is,  for  Hegel,  an  interpretation  of  the  world  by  the  social 
self,  and  by  the  individual  man  only  in  so  far  as  he  iden- 
tifies himself  with  the  social  self.  That  is,  the  nation  or 
the  church  or  humanity  has  a  religion.  The  individual 
man  comes  to  a  consciousness  of  his  religion  through  his 
community  with  his  nation  or  his  church  or  with  hu- 
manity. Religion  as  a  purely  private  and  personal  ex- 
perience could  only  consist  of  such  forms  as  the  unhappy 
consciousness  has  already  exemplified. 

The  early  forms  of  religion  define  the  universe  in 
terms  of  powers  of  nature.  The  unconscious  idealism  of 
the  primitive  mind  appears  in  the  fact  that  these  powers 
tend  from  the  outset  to  be  conceived  as  living  powers, 
which,  in  order  that  they  may  be  viewed  as  sufficiently 
foreign  and  mysterious,  are  often  typified  by  animals. 
Gradually  the  consciousness  grows  that  human  activity 
is  needed  in  order  that  by  suitable  monuments,  by  vast 
constructions  due  to  the  worshippers  themselves,  the  na- 
ture of  the  world-fashioning  intelligence  may  be  at  once 
fittingly  honored  and,  through  imitation,  portrayed.  The 
result  is  seen  in  the  vast  architectural  religion  of  Egypt, 
of  whose  true  nature  Hegel,  when  he  wrote  this  book,  had 
indeed  small  knowledge.  Greek  religious  thought,  con- 
ceiving its  deities  in  human  form,  came  nearer  to  a 
knowledge  of  the  true  relation  of  the  Absolute  and  the 
finite  being.  The  result  was  the  religion  of  art,  wherein 
the  divine  is  portrayed  by  representing  ideal  types  of 
human  beings.  But  art,  in  humanizing  the  divine,  inevi- 
tably tends  also  to  humanize  itself.  In  tragic  poetry  the 
gods  gradually  give  place  to  mortal  heroes;  and  poetry 
becomes  consciously  an  imitation  of  human  life.  Comedy 
completes  the  process  of  this  humanization.  Man,  who 
started  to  portray  the  gods,  portrays,  and  in  the  end 

210 


DIALECTICAL  PROGRESS 

mercilessly  criticizes,  merely  men;  and  the  ancient  re- 
ligion dissolves  itself  in  a  humanistic  skepticism.  There 
are  no  gods.  There  are  only  men.  The  individual  selves 
are  all.  This  is  the  anarchical  stage  of  religion. 

But  the  world  itself  remains — mysterious,  all-power- 
ful, objective,  the  dark  realm  that  this  skepticism  cannot 
pierce.  The  mythical  personifications  have  turned  into 
human  fancies.  Man  remains  on  one  side,  the  Absolute 
on  the  other.  The  one  is  self-conscious;  but  the  other  is 
the  hidden  source  of  self-consciousness,  hopeless,  baf- 
fling, overwhelming  in  its  vastness.  What  form  of  con- 
ception can  portray  the  now  seemingly  impenetrable  es- 
sence of  this  Absolute,  from  which  we  creatures  of  a 
day  seem  to  be  now  sundered  as  mere  outer  shells  of 
meaningless  finitude? 

There  remains  one  form  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness untried.  It  is,  at  this  point  in  human  history, 
ready  to  come  to  life.  In  a  highly  dramatic  passage  Hegel 
now  depicts  how  about  the  birthplace  of  this  new  form 
of  consciousness  there  gather,  like  the  wise  men  from  the 
East,  some  of  the  most  significant  of  the  Gestalten  so  far 
represented:  Stoicism  is  there,  proclaiming  the  dignity 
of  the  self  as  the  universal  reason,  but  knowing  not  who 
the  self  is;  the  unhappy  consciousness  is  there,  seeking 
its  lost  Lord;  the  social  spirit  of  the  ancient  state  is 
there,  lamenting  the  loss  of  its  departed  spirit :  all  these 
forms  wait  and  long  for  the  new  birth.  And  the  new 
birth  comes  thus:  That  it  is  the  faith  of  the  world  that 
the  Absolute,  even  as  the  Absolute  that  was  hidden,  has  \ 
now  revealed  itself  as  an  individual  man,  and  has  be---' 
come  incarnate. 

This  faith  then  holds  not  that  an  accidental  individual 
man  is  all,  but  that  the  essential  Absolute  reveals  itself 

211 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 

as  man,  and  this  is  the  first  form  of  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness. 

This  form  too  must  pass  away.  This  visible  Lord  must 
be  hidden  again  in  the  heavens.  For  sense  never  holds 
fast  the  Absolute.  There  remains  the  consciousness,  first 
that  the  Spirit  of  God  is  ever  present  in  his  church,  and 
then  that  the  church  knows — although  indeed  under  the 
form  of  allegories — how  the  Absolute  Being  is  complete 
in  himself  only  in  so  far  as  he  expresses  himself  in  a 
world  which  endlessly  falls  away  from  him  into  finitude, 
sin,  darkness,  and  error,  while  he  as  endlessly  reconciles 
it  to  himself  again,  living  and  suffering  in  individual 
form  in  order  that,  through  regaining  his  union  with  his 
own  Absolute  Source,  he  may  draw  and  reconcile  all 
things  to  himself. 

This,  says  Hegel,  is  the  allegory  of  which  philosophy 
is  the  truth. 


212 


LECTURE  IX. 
HEGEL'S   MATURE   SYSTEM. 

THUS  far,  in  our  studies  of  Schilling's  and  of 
Hegel 's  early  works,  we  have  been  illustrating  the 
rise  and,  as  one  might  say,  the  youth  of  the  ideal- 
istic movement.  We  have  examined  some  of  the  motives 
and  methods  of  this  youthful  period  of  idealism ;  we  have 
contended  with  some  of  its  difficulties.  We  have  seen 
some  of  the  relations  of  the  philosophers  to  the  civiliza- 
tion of  that  age.  We  must  now  make  an  attempt  to  indi- 
cate the  form  in  which  philosophical  idealism  reached  its 
first  maturity  in  the  system  of  Hegel. 

I. 

After  Hegel  published  the  Phaenomenologie  des 
Geistes,  he  was  for  some  years  forced  by  the  political 
consequences  of  the  battle  of  Jena  to  abandon  his  work 
as  a  teacher  of  philosophy.  He  continued,  however,  his 
efforts  to  formulate  his  system,  and  in  1812  began  the 
publication  of  his  Logik.  Not  until  1816  was  he  able  to 
begin  work  as  professor  of  philosophy  at  Heidelberg.  In 
1818  he  passed  over  to  Berlin,  where  his  career  was  con- 
tinued until  his  death  in  1831.  It  was  at  Berlin  that  he 
soon  became  the  recognized  leader  of  a  school;  and  for 
years  his  philosophy  had  an  almost  overwhelming  promi- 
nence in  the  universities  of  Germany. 

The  completed  system  of  Hegel  was  outlined,  during 
213 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
his  life,  in  his  systematic  treatise  called  the  Encyclo- 
paedic der  philosophischen  Wissenschaften.  Here  he  ap- 
pears as  one  attempting,  like  a  modern  Aristotle,  the 
task  of  surveying  the  total  result  of  human  knowledge 
with  reference  to  its  unification  in  terms  of  an  idealistic 
philosophy. 

It  will  be  of  interest  to  consider  briefly  in  what  spirit 
Hegel  attempted  this  unification.  You  well  know,  by  this 
time,  the  main  conditions  which  an  idealistic  philosopher 
must  have  in  mind  in  such  an  undertaking.  For  an  ideal- 
ist the  field  of  human  knowledge  is,  as  you  will  remem- 
ber, no  mere  report  of  the  structure  of  a  world  that  ex- 
ists in  itself,  apart  from  all  our  knowledge.  On  the 
contrary,  our  knowledge,  whatever  else  it  is,  is  an  expres- 
sion of  ourselves.  It  is  a  revelation  of  the  true  nature  of 
the  human  reason.  If  such  an  idealistic  philosophy  suc- 
ceeds in  giving  an  account  of  the  universe,  it  will  there- 
fore show  that  our  human  reason  is  in  unity  with  the  ulti- 
mate nature  of  things.  That  is,  it  will  teach  that  this 
human  reason  is  itself  the  embodiment,  in  various  indi- 
vidual lives,  processes,  investigations,  practical  activities, 
opinions,  theories — the  embodiment,  I  say,  of  an  Abso- 
lute Reason,  while  the  world  is  the  creation  of  this  Abso- 
lute. The  outcome  of  the  Phaenomenologie  has  already 
indicated  to  us  how,  in  Hegel's  view,  this  embodi- 
ment of  an  Absolute  Reason  in  the  form  of  our  human 
consciousness  is  to  be  interpreted.  Let  us  review  this  out- 
come sufficiently  to  see  how  the  resulting  system  of 
philosophy  must  be  expressed,  in  case  such  a  system  is 
possible  at  all. 

The  first  result  of  the  Phaenomenologie  which  here 
concerns  us  is  the  thesis  that  human  error  and  human 
finitude  are  themselves  a  necessary  part  of  the  expres- 

214 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

sion  of  the  absolute  truth.  To  assert  this  thesis  is  char- 
acteristic of  Hegel's  form  of  idealism,  and  the  whole 
system  centers  about  this  proposition.  The  proposition 
itself  is  identical  with  the  assertion  that  the  dialectical 
method  is  the  true  method  of  philosophy.  When  you  be- 
gin to  philosophize,  you  seek,  very  properly,  to  escape 
from  errors  and  to  find  the  truth  just  as  it  is.  Hence 
errors,  defective  points  of  view,  false  opinions,  seem  to 
you  simply  regrettable  incidents  which  you  wish  to  es- 
cape. When  later  you  discover,  as  Kant  wishes  you  to  do, 
that  human  thought  is  through  and  through  burdened 
with  tendencies  to  error,  that  phenomena  only  are  known 
to  you,  not  pure  truth,  you  feel  as  if  the  purpose  of  phi- 
losophy had  wholly  failed.  But  Hegel  undertakes  to  show 
that  truth  can  only  be  defined  by  taking  account,  as  it 
were,  of  a  certain  necessary  totality  of  defective  or  er- 
roneous points  of  view.  Or  again,  Hegel 's  account  of  the 
world  might  be  defined  as  an  assertion  that  the  necessary 
and  unified  totality  of  the  phenomena  is  itself  the  abso- 
lute truth ;  so  that  there  is  indeed  no  truth  to  seek  beyond 
the  phenomena,  while  nevertheless  no  single  phenome- 
non, and  no  finite  set  or  circle  of  phenomena  can  consti- 
tute the  truth.  Errors,  then,  are  but  partial  views  of  the 
truth.  The  partiality  of  such  views  is  indeed  regrettable, 
In  case  you  remain  fast  bound  in  and  by  such  a  partial 
point  of  view.  But  if  you  learn  to  view  the  partial  truths 
in  their  setting,  then  you  see  that  without  the  par- 
tial truths  the  totality  of  the  truth  would  be  impossible ; 
or,  in  terms  of  the  dialectical  method,  you  see  that  with- 
out the  errors,  the  truth  would  be  impossible.  As  Hegel 
boldly  expressed  the  situation,  in  the  metaphorical  lan- 
guage characteristic  of  his  early  period,  and  of  his  Phae- 
nomenologie,  "The  truth  is  the  Bacchanalian  revel, 

215 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
wherein  every  one  of  the  finite  forms  of  the  truth  appears 
as  an  intoxicated  illusion."  (Die  Wahrheit  ist  der  Bac- 
chantische  Taumel,  worin  alle  Gestalten  trunken  sind.) 
No  view  of  the  nature  of  truth  could  appear  more  absurd 
if  you  approach  the  system  unsympathetically,  and  from 
without.  And  that  is  why  Hegel  hoped  to  prepare  the 
way  for  his  system  by  writing  the  Phaenomenologie  as  an 
introduction.  According  to  this  book,  common  sense  is,  as 
a  fact,  dialectical  and  self -refuting,  since  it  asserts  the 
existence  of  a  world  of  fact  independently  of  its  own 
thoughts,  while  common  sense  is  still  unable  to  define  or 
to  describe  this  external  world  except  in  terms  of  the 
categories  of  its  own  thought.  So  far  Kant's  analysis  in- 
evitably brings  us,  as  we  deal  with  the  problems  that 
lead  us  over  to  idealism.  Meanwhile,  common  sense,  while 
thus  theoretically  at  war  with  its  own  anti-idealistic  con- 
ceptions, is  all  the  while,  in  Hegel's  opinion,  practically 
idealistic,  since  every  one  of  us  naturally  views  the  world 
as  centered  about  his  own  personality,  and  conceives  the 
nature  of  things  pragmatically,  that  is,  as  possessing 
reality  precisely  in  so  far  as  this  nature  of  things  has 
value  for  his  own  conduct.  Hence  the  common  sense  point 
of  view  at  once  says,  ' '  The  facts  are  the  facts,  whatever 
I  may  think,"  and  also  adds,  "What  I  have  to  conceive 
as  true,  I  must  regard  as  true ;  for  otherwise  I  have  no 
basis  for  action,  and  no  plan  of  conduct. ' ' 

Yet  common  sense,  self -contradictory  as  it  is,  is  an  ab- 
solutely inevitable  beginning  for  philosophy.  Whatever 
truth  we  are  to  come  to  see  must,  then,  come  to  our  knowl- 
edge through  a  process  which  involves,  not  the  abandon- 
ment, but  the  supplementing  of  common  sense — not  the 
dropping  of  those  errors  which  inevitably  reassert  them- 
selves whenever  we  move  about  as  we  do  in  the  world  of 

216 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

common  sense,  but  the  enlarging  of  our  consciousness 
through  an  insight  which  shows  those  errors  to  be  a  nec- 
essary aspect  and  moment  of  the  absolute  truth. 

Not  only  is  the  point  of  view  of  common  sense  thus  at 
once  erroneous  and  necessary — a  way  to  the  truth, 
though  leading  through  the  very  labyrinth  where  the 
monster  of  error  dwells — but  the  same  character  of  the 
truth,  the  same  relative  justification  of  error,  has  ap- 
peared at  every  stage  of  that  progress  of  consciousness 
of  which  the  Phaenomenologie  is  supposed  to  be  the 
record.  The  series  of  stages  of  consciousness  which  Hegel 
has  traced  is,  according  to  him,  substantially  inevitable. 
It  is  indeed  not  necessary  that  the  individual  man  should 
in  each  case  literally  repeat  in  his  personal  life,  the 
march  over  the  long  road  of  error  through  which  the  hu- 
man race  has  so  far  found  its  way.  That  is,  the  individual 
man  need  not  first,  like  the  savage,  kill  his  enemies  in 
order  to  learn  how  self-assertion  is  possible  only  in  social 
forms ;  he  need  not  be  a  master  or  a  slave,  a  monk,  or  a 
Faust,  an  anarchist  or  a  loyal  subject  of  an  ancient  Greek 
commonwealth,  in  order  to  learn  the  truth  that  was  in- 
corporated in  each  of  these  forms  of  life.  But  that  is 
because,  these  forms  of  life  having  actually  expressed 
their  truth  and  having  paid  the  penalty  of  their  errors, 
each  by  asserting  itself,  and  then  by  passing  away,  the 
individual  man  can  learn  their  lesson  in  a  more  or  less 
abstract  way,  and  so  can  use  this  lesson  in  defining  higher 
grades  of  insight.  Hegel,  however,  insists  that  without 
the  actual  expression,  in  living  form,  of  the  lower  type 
of  consciousness,  the  higher  type  could  not  find  its  own 
expression.  The  essence  of  this  higher  life  is  to  be  the 
truth  of  the  lower  stages ;  and  so  in  general  it  is  of  the 
essence  of  all  truth  to  be  the  truth  of  some  error,  the 

217 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
goal  which  that  error  was  seeking.  Hence  the  Absolute 
exists  only  as  the  truth  of  the  lower  and  of  the  relative ; 
the  infinite  exists  only  as  the  truth  of  the  finite ;  the  per- 
fect can  be  real  only  as  the  fulfilment  of  what  is  sought 
by  the  imperfect. 

II. 

A  second  result  of  the  Phaenomenologie  is,  in  Hegel 's 
opinion  this :  Since  each  imperfect  stage  of  consciousness 
is  an  interpretation  of  the  whole  real  universe  from  some 
limited  or  finite  point  of  view,  and  since  each  such  inter- 
pretation is  led  over  from  its  own  lower  stage  to  the  next 
higher  stage  of  consciousness  by  a  process  of  what  might 
be  called  immanent  self-criticism — a  process  whereby 
each  stage  comes  to  a  self-consciousness  regarding  its 
own  purposes  and  its  own  meaning — it  follows  that  the 
method  of  philosophy  must  consist  in  a  deliberate  and 
systematic  development  of  this  very  mode  of  self-criti- 
cism of  the  processes  and  attitudes  of  consciousness.  In 
the  Phaenomenologie  we  found  that  Hegel  simply  ac- 
cepted from  experience  the  historical  fact  that  certain 
types  of  human  character,  of  social  life,  and  of  religious 
consciousness,  exist  or  have  existed.  "We  found  him,  after 
accepting  from  without,  as  it  were,  these  forms,  there- 
upon applying  his  dialectical  method  to  each  of  them  in 
succession,  and  so  showing  how  each  form  was  dialectical 
and  was  therefore  inadequate  to  express  its  own  inmost 
purposes.  "We  then  found  him  at  the  close  of  such  dia- 
lectical history  of  a  stage  of  consciousness,  looking  about 
him,  as  it  were,  in  experience  and  in  history  for  a  form 
or  type  of  consciousness  which  should  express  some 
higher  phase  of  the  truth  and  of  insight.  Such  an  appli- 
cation of  the  dialectical  method  characterized  his  intro- 
duction to  philosophy.  But  herewith  we  found  indeed 

218 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

but  a  fragmentary  expression  of  what,  to  Hegel's  mind, 
the  dialectical  method  must  become  when  applied  to  the 
proper  business  of  the  philosophical  system  itself.  The 
change  which  must  characterize,  for  such  a  thinker,  the 
transition  from  his  introduction  to  his  finished  system, 
thus  becomes  fairly  obvious. 

The  system  of  Hegel  must  do  for  our  fundamental 
ideas  of  truth,  for  the  necessary  categories  of  the  mind, 
and  for  the  answering  of  our  various  questions  about 
truth  and  reality,  what  the  Phaenomenologie  undertook 
to  do  for  the  various  stages  whereby  the  human  mind  has 
approached  the  philosophical  point  of  view  itself.  Has 
our  thought  a  certain  necessary  nature?  Are  our  true 
categories  only  the  expression  of  some  one  fundamental 
principle  of  reason  ?  Is  the  nature  of  things  an  expression 
of  the  reason?  Is  the  variety  of  human  selves  an  inevi- 
table manifestation  of  the  one  Absolute  Reason  ?  Are  Na- 
ture and  Mind  different  stages  in  the  manifestation  of 
this  one  Reason?  Such,  as  you  know,  are  the  questions 
which  a  system  of  Hegel 's  type  proposes  to  answer  in  the 
affirmative.  And  you  are  now  prepared  to  understand  at 
least  in  a  general  way,  the  motives  which  led  Hegel  to 
undertake  this  answer  by  means  of  a  repeated  and,  in 
fact  an  unweariedly  persistent  application  and  reappli- 
cation  of  his  dialectical  method. 

Hegel,  like  his  predecessors,  conceives  the  whole  na- 
ture of  things  as  due  to  the  very  principle  which  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  self.  But  now,  as  the  Phaenomenologie 
has  especially  taught  us,  the  self,  in  Hegel's  opinion,  is 
through  and  through  a  dialectical  being.  It  lives  by 
transcending  and  even  thereby  including  its  own  lower 
manifestations.  Every  finite  form  that  it  can  take  exists 
only  to  be  transcended,  but  even  thereby  exists  to  be  in- 

219 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
eluded  in  the  self's  complete  life.  The  self  sins,  but  only 
to  repent  its  own  sin,  by  attaining  through  this  very  re- 
pentance a  renewed  moral  vigor.  It  dies;  but  only  to 
rise  on  stepping  stones  of  its  dead  selves  to  higher  things. 
It  errs,  in  order  thereby  to  illustrate  the  truth  which  is 
richer  than  the  error.  The  Phaenomenologie  has  merely 
illustrated  this  general  process.  The  mature  system  shall 
define  the  same  process  in  exact  and  technical  terms,  and 
in  these  very  terms  shall  apply  the  resulting  conception 
of  the  self  to  explaining  the  whole  world  as  due  to  the 
very  principle  which  the  self  embodies.  This,  then,  is 
Hegel 's  philosophical  ideal. 

III. 

Meanwhile,  as  we  also  know,  this  form  of  idealism  will 
undertake  to  deduce  the  variety  of  the  categories  of  our 
thought  from  a  single  principle.  And  this  principle,  in 
Hegel's  case,  will  again  be  the  self.  Consequently  Hegel 
will  attempt  to  show  how  the  various  fundamental  con- 
ceptions which  the  human  mind  uses  in  the  processes 
exemplified  by  the  various  sciences  are  themselves  stages 
in  the  formation  and  in  the  expression  of  self -conscious- 
ness. These  stages  will  be  united  in  a  series  by  ties  of  the 
same  sort  as  those  which,  in  the  Phaenomenologie,  bound 
together  the  various  Gestalten  des  Bewusstseins.  The 
various  categories  of  our  human  thought,  such  as  being, 
change,  quality,  quantity,  measure,  thing,  property,  con- 
tent, form,  internal,  external,  causality,  substance — the 
fundamental  conceptions,  in  brief,  which  we  use  in  our 
various  sciences  as  our  tools  for  comprehending  the  na- 
tare  of  things — these  will  be,  for  Hegel,  one  and  all  of 
them  stages  in  the  self-expression  of  our  thoughtful  ac- 
tivity— Gestalten,  as  it  were,  of  the  thinker's  life.  Each 

220 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

category  will  be  necessary  in  its  place  and  for  its  own 
purpose.  But  no  one  of  them,  by  itself,  will  have  absolute 
validity,  unless  indeed  the  name  for  their  total  system, 
the  Idee  itself  as  the  Absolute  Idee,  shall  be  viewed  as 
itself  one  of  these  categories.  Each  category,  each  idea 
such  as  quality,  quantity,  etc.,  shall  be  limited — a  neces- 
sary, but  an  abstract,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  merely  ab- 
stract, an  untrue  expression  of  the  total  nature  of  things. 
As  the  master  or  the  slave,  as  the  stoic  or  the  monk,  as 
the  pleasure  seeker  or  the  intellectual  animal,  as  each  of 
these  types  both  was  and  was  not  the  true  self,  was  the 
self  under  a  limitation,  but  therefore  was  not  the  whole 
self,  and  so  had  to  give  place,  in  the  evolution  of  life,  to 
a  truer  Oestalt;  so  too  it  will  prove  to  be  the  case  with  the 
categories.  Each  special  category  will  be  the  truth,  but 
not  the  whole  truth  of  things.  Each,  then,  will  find  its 
truth  in  later  categories.  But  the  last  category,  which 
will  end  the  systematic  list  and  which  will  thus  close  the 
series,  will  express  the  truth  only  in  so  far  as  it  explicitly 
includes  in  itself  the  totality  of  all  the  other  and  previous 
categories;  precisely  as  the  Absolute  Life,  of  which  the 
close  of  the  Phaenomenologie  gave  us  a  hint,  exists  only 
as  differentiating  itself  into  the  totality  of  the  finite 
Gestalten,  as  expressing  itself  in  them,  and  so  forgiving 
their  finitude  just  because  the  wealth  of  its  own  perfec- 
tion dwells  in  their  totality. 

IV. 

In  a  way  similar  to  that  in  which  Hegel  develops  his 
system  of  categories,  he  must  undertake  also,  in  accord- 
ance with  his  principles,  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  the 
nature  of  the  real  world,  with  the  relations  of  the  phys- 
ical world  and  the  mind,  and  with  the  origin  and  with 

221 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
the  social  and  historical  connections  of  those  various 
types  of  personality  which  the  Phaenomenologie  merely 
accepted  as  empirically  given  facts  of  life,  and  used  there 
merely  as  illustrations  of  stages  of  consciousness.  In  deal- 
ing with  the  vast  range  of  problems  thus  suggested, 
Hegel  was  obviously  sure  to  meet  with  the  severest  test 
of  the  adequacy  of  the  philosophical  conceptions  whose 
significance  we  have  been  sketching  in  the  foregoing.  It 
is  one  thing  to  use  examples  from  human  life  as  in- 
stances of  the  dialectical  method.  It  is  another  thing  to 
show  in  detail  that  by  means  of  the  sole  principle  that 
the  nature  of  the  Absolute  is  most  completely  expressed 
in  the  nature  of  the  self,  one  can  explain  the  necessity 
that  the  life  of  the  Absolute  should  also  be  expressed  in 
such  an  enormous  wealth  of  forms  as  those  which  ex- 
ternal nature  and  human  history  present  to  our  experi- 
ence. Yet  the  postulates  which  determined  Hegel's  gen- 
eral fashion  of  thought,  and  which  the  foregoing  account 
has  now  brought  to  our  notice,  required  him  to  undertake, 
althoug  with  certain  express  limitations,  a  task  of  this 
general  nature.  And  his  courage  was  equal  to  the  enter- 
prise, so  far  as  he  was  able  to  define  to  himself  what  this 
enterprise  meant.  It  is  fair,  however,  to  note  at  once 
under  what  limitations  and  subject  to  what  restrictions 
Hegel  undertook  his  task  of  surveying  the  sum  total  of 
the  results  of  the  special  sciences  known  to  him,  and  of 
unifying  these  results  by  means  of  an  application  of  the 
dialectical  method. 

It  is  indeed  unfair  to  suppose  that  Hegel  regarded  as 
the  ideal  business  of  philosophy  to  deduce  a  priori  the 
necessity  according  to  which  the  absolute  nature  of  things 
must  require,  in  consequence  of  its  inevitable  dialectic, 
the  existence  of  each  individual  thing  in  nature  or  even 

222 

\ 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

of  each  law  of  the  physical  world,  or  of  each  kind  of 
living  creature,  or  of  each  event  of  universal  history,  or 
of  each  individual  man  or  nation.  People  have  often  at- 
tributed to  Hegel  an  extravagant  a-priorism  of  this  type, 
according  to  which  every  finite  fact  should  be,  in  all  its 
individual  details,  a  necessarily  required  stage  in  the 
expression  of  the  Absolute  Being.  In  truth,  Hegel  was 
very  far  removed  from  such  a  view.  It  is  true  that  he  as- 
serted that  whatever  has  genuine  actuality  is  an  expres- 
sion of  the  universal  reason,  which  necessarily  expresses 
itself  in  a  totality  of  individual  infinite  forms.  But  with 
Hegel,  each  individual  thing  has  a  positive  relation  to 
universal  reason,  and  so  possesses  genuine  actuality,  not 
in  every  respect,  but  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  significant 
fact.  It  is  part  of  what  he  regards  as  the  dialectic  process 
of  the  Absolute  Reason  that,  just  as  the  one  reason  ex- 
presses itself  in  forms  which  are  imperfect  and  finite,  so, 
too,  it  should  express  itself  in  a  wealth  of  forms  whose  de- 
tails are  accidental  as  well  as  imperfect.  The  Absolute,  in 
order  to  express  itself  fully,  must,  in  fact,  for  the  very 
reasons  which  the  dialectic  method  emphasizes,  triumph 
over  the  unreasonable.  And  one  way  in  which  the  unrea- 
sonable appears  in  experience  is  in  the  form  of  the  acci- 
dental, of  the  relatively  chaotic.  Hegel,  therefore,  is 
amongst  the  philosophers  who  emphasize  the  presence,  in 
the  finite  world,  of  an  element  of  what  one  may  call  ob- 
jective chance.  He  explicitly  insists  upon  this  fact  at  the 
outset  of  his  treatment  of  the  philosophy  of  nature,  in 
the  Encyclopaedic;  and  whatever  one  may  think  of  this 
doctrine  he  is  profoundly  unjust  who  attributes  to  Hegel 
a  crass  literalism  in  the  application  of  the  famous  princi- 
ple: Alles  Wirkliche  ist  Verniinftig.  This  Hegelian  as- 
sertion means  simply  that  whatever  is  the  expression  of 

223 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
any  essential  principle,  whatever,  in  other  words,  is  in 
its  detail  genuinely  necessary,  is  in  the  world  for  some 
good  reason.  That  is,  all  true  necessity  is  not  blind  but 
significant,  is  not  merely  fatal  law  but  is  the  expression 
of  reason.  And  wherever  there  is  a  good  reason  for  the 
existence  of  any  object  in  the  world,  Hegel's  philosophical 
ideal  indeed  requires  that  philosophy  shall  undertake  to 
tell  what  that  reason  is.  Nevertheless,  Hegel  maintains 
upon  characteristically  dialectical  grounds  that,  since 
reason  is  an  active  principle,  finding  its  true  place  in  the 
world  as  a  process  of  conflict  whereby  it  overcomes  its 
own  opponents,  there  is  thus  a  good  general  reason  why 
a  great  deal  of  what  in  each  particular  case  is  unreason 
should  exist  in  the  world  to  be  overcome.  Some  of  the 
forms  of  unreason  we  have  already  met  with  in  our  dis- 
cussion of  the  Phaenomenologie.  We  have  seen  why  Hegel 
thought  it  reasonable  that  such  instances  of  unreason 
should  occur,  and  should  be  overcome.  There  are,  then, 
unreasonable  facts  in  Hegel 's  world.  Such  are  needed  in 
order  to  give  to  Hegel 's  form  of  the  reasonable  principle 
its  opportunity  to  triumph  through  its  own  activity.  For 
we  have  seen  how  such  triumph  is  significant.  Hence, 
from  Hegel's  point  of  view,  it  is  quite  reasonable  that 
particular  instances  of  the  irrational  should  be  present, 
but  to  be  overcome.  If  you  hereupon  consider  any  special 
instance  of  an  unreasonable  fact — a  foolish  sentiment,  a 
passing  mood,  a  particular  superstition,  a  crime,  a  mob,  a 
social  catastrophe,  or  any  one  of  the  countless  varieties 
of  facts  in  the  physical  world — Hegel  insists  that  such  a 
fact,  just  in  so  far  as  it  expresses  no  rational  principle 
but  is  there  merely  as  something  for  reason  to  overcome, 
has  an  element  of  brute  chance  about  it,  is  objectively 
accidental.  Reason  requires  in  general  that  such  facts 

224 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

should  be  found  in  the  world,  but  not  just  this  irrational 
fact.  Hence  philosophy  has  no  call  to  "deduce"  any  sin- 
gle fact  of  this  sort ;  and  for  Hegel  such  facts  are  legion, 
throughout  nature  and  the  social  world.  Indeed  Hegel  so 
differentiates  the  vocabulary  which  he  uses  to  name  his 
categories  as  to  enable  him  to  express  the  sense  in  which 
less  rational  types  of  facts  have  their  lower  and  rela- 
tively accidental  grade  of  being  in  his  idealistic  world. 
A  well-organized  social  order,  for  instance,  has  what  he 
calls  Wirklichkeit,  i.e.,  genuine  actuality.  It  is,  namely, 
the  visible  or  phenomenal  and  in  so  far  relatively  ade- 
quate expression  of  a  rational  principle.  But  a  chance 
phase  of  the  social  order — a  panic,  a  mob,  an  audience 
in  a  theater — belongs  to  the  world,  not  of  actuality,  but 
of  bare  existence.  Hegel  uses  for  such  facts  the  term 
Existenz;  i.e.,  they  are  not  possessed  of  Wirklichkeit.  So 
too,  in  the  physical  world,  the  solar  system  has  Wirklich- 
keit. But  this  stone  that  your  feet  stumble  over  in  the 
dark  is  where  it  is  in  what  Hegel  regards  as  a  relatively 
accidental  way ;  it  is  therefore  merely  an  existent. 

Far  then  from  being,  as  commonly  supposed,  an  ex- 
travagant rationalist,  who  deduced  all  natural  and  social 
phenomena  from  a  single  principle,  so  that  their  detail 
might  be  regarded  as  predictable,  Hegel  believed,  on  the 
contrary,  that  he  had  deduced  the  necessity  of  the  objec- 
tive presence  of  an  irreducible  variety  of  phenomena 
which  were  not  further  to  be  viewed  as,  in  their  individ- 
ual detail,  rational.  Accordingly  one  may  charge  Hegel 
rather  with  having  too  hastily  overlooked  the  possibility 
of  discovering  a  deeper  reasonableness  in  many  things 
which  now  appear  to  us  to  be  accidental  than  with  hav- 
ing been  a  merely  blind  partisan  of  the  reasonableness 
of  whatever  happens. 

225 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
V. 

Within  the  limits  thus  set,  Hegel  is,  however, 
committed  to  the  undertaking  of  bringing  all  the  posi- 
tive results  of  the  sciences  of  his  time,  so  far  as  he  per- 
sonally understood  them,  into  harmony  with  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  his  system.  The  existence  of  the 
physical  world,  its  principal  types  of  inorganic  and  of 
organic  processes  and  forms,  the  relation  between  the  hu- 
man mind  and  physical  nature,  the  general  character- 
istics of  the  human  mind  itself,  its  grades  and  types  of 
mental  activity,  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  society, 
the  types  of  social  life,  the  general  philosophy  of  law, 
the  general  course  of  human  history,  the  problems  of  re- 
ligion— all  the  philosophical  issues  suggested  by  this  cat- 
alogue of  topics,  Hegel  undertook,  in  his  system,  to  treat 
from  his  own  point  of  view.  He  stands  committed  there- 
fore to  the  attempt  to  show  how  an  Absolute  Being, 
whose  inmost  nature  is  expressed  in  the  ways  which  our 
study  has  now  brought  to  our  notice,  requires  the  pres- 
ence in  the  world  of  all  these  various  special  modes  of 
being. 

The  principle  of  the  entire  system  whereby  this  result 
is  to  be  obtained,  is  now  in  outline  known  to  us.  The  Abso- 
lute is  essentially  a  Self — not  any  one  individual  human 
self,  but  a  completely  self-determined  being,  of  whom 
our  varied  individuality  is  an  expression.  The  Absolute 
expresses  its  life  in  forms  which,  if  viewed  in  their  most 
general  types,  are  identical  with  those  categories  which 
we  have  mentioned.  All  these  expressions  of  the  Absolute 
are  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  the  dialectical 
method.  Finite  beings,  as  the  dialectical  method  shows, 
have  in  themselves,  in  case  they  are  viewed  by  a  false 

226 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

abstraction  apart  from  their  source,  a  self-contradictory 
nature.  The  law  of  finite  being  is :  Every  finite  thing  in 
heaven  and  earth,  when  taken  alone,  contradicts  itself, 
that  is,  illustrates  what  Hegel  calls  the  principle  of  neg- 
ativity. That  is,  again,  no  finite  being  exists  in  itself,  or  is 
in  itself  intelligible.  The  Infinite  then,  the  Absolute  Be- 
ing, when  taken  in  its  true  nature,  is  indeed  the  only 
reality.  But  the  infinite,  the  Absolute  Being,  that  which 
lies  beneath  and  is  embodied  in  all  finite  selves,  cannot 
be  taken  or  viewed  as  merely  infinite.  To  view  it  thus 
would  again  be  to  contradict  one 's  self.  For  so  viewed  it 
would  be  nothing — like  the  pure  self  of  the  Hindoos. 
The  infinite,  then,  exists  only  as  differentiated  into  the 
totality  of  its  finite  expressions.  It  is  what  Hegel  calls 
the  concrete  infinite.  It  can  be  only  in  so  far  as  it  reveals, 
expresses,  embodies,  surrenders  itself,  and  so  becomes — 
not  indeed  exclusively  any  one  finite  thing,  but  the  total- 
ity of  the  finite.  It  is  beneath  the  finite  only  in  so  far  as 
it  is  expressed  in  and  through  the  finite.  It  is  the  totality 
of  the  finite  viewed  in  its  unity.  The  forms  wherein  this 
infinite  reveals  itself  may  still  be  viewed,  however,  first 
abstractly  and  apart  from  their  concrete  expressions. 
They  are  the  categories,  the  necessary  forms  of  thought. 
We  can  discover  these,  can  develop  them  by  means  of  the 
dialectic  method ;  for  we  ourselves,  not  in  our  mere  sep- 
arate individuality,  but  in  our  rational  consciousness  as 
forms  of  the  self,  are  identical  in  nature  with  the  Abso- 
lute Being.  To  discover  the  categories  is  at  once  to  define 
the  true  nature  of  the  self,  and  to  show  how  the  Absolute 
Being,  which  is  identical  in  nature  with  the  basis  of  all 
selfhood,  can  alone  express  itself.  The  complete  expres- 
sion of  the  Absolute,  that  is,  the  ways  in  which  these  cate- 
gories get  a  live  expression,  we  find  in  outer  nature  with 

227 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
its  wealth  of  forms.  Each  of  these  forms  in  which  natural 
objects  appear  is  in  its  essence  rational ;  but  in  its  special 
expression  each  natural  form  is  finite  and  so  is  also  ac- 
cidental. Nature,  in  fact,  is  a  phenomenal  embodiment  of 
the  categories — an  embodiment  which  exists  just  be- 
cause the  Absolute,  in  order  to  be  true  to  its  own  dia- 
lectical nature,  must  first  express  itself  in  what  appears 
to  be  an  external  and  foreign  form,  even  in  order  to  win, 
through  the  conquest  over  this  form,  a  consciousness  of 
its  own  complete  self-possession.  But  again,  the  Absolute, 
if  viewed  as  conquering  its  natural  or  apparently  for- 
eign form  of  expression,  in  order  thereby  to  win  a  con- 
scious self-possession,  constitutes,  in  contrast  with  ex- 
ternal nature,  the  world  of  finite  minds.  A  finite  mind 
is  a  process  whereby  the  Absolute  expresses  itself 
as  some  special  instance  of  a  conflict  with  nature,  with 
chance,  with  the  accidental.  Through  this  conflict, 
through  vicissitudes  such  as  the  Gestalten  of  the  Phae- 
nomenologie  have  already  exemplified,  the  Absolute  wins 
a  consciousness  of  its  conquest  over  its  own  self -aliena- 
tion. For,  as  Hegel  repeatedly  insists,  the  only  way  in 
which  self-consciousness  can  attain  its  goal  is  through 
such  a  conquest  over  self-alienation,  through  a  becoming 
finite,  through  suffering  as  a  finite  being,  through  encoun- 
tering estrangement,  accident,  the  unreasonable,  the  de- 
fective, and  through  winning  hereby  a  self-possession  that 
belongs  only  to  the  life  that  first  seeks  in  order  to  find. 
Assuming  a  natural  guise,  being  subject  to  finite  condi- 
tions, the  Absolute  wins  in  human  form  its  self-posses- 
sion at  the  moment  when  it  comes  to  regard  this  human 
life  as  an  embodiment  of  an  absolute,  that  is  of  a  divine 
life. 


228 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 


The  consciousness  that  our  natural  and  finite  life  is  the 
mode  of  expression  which  is  necessary  for  the  very  ex- 
istence of  an  Absolute  or  Infinite  Life  takes,  according  to 
Hegel,  three  shapes  —  those  of  art,  of  religion  and  of  ^  — 
philosophy.  Art  presents  the  union  of  the  finite  with  the 
infinite  by  displaying  a  phenomenal  object  which  directly 
appears  as  expressing  an  absolute  ideal.  Religion  knows 
the  fact  of  this  union  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite  in  a 
still  higher  form,  but  expresses  this  knowledge  in  alle- 
gorical, in  imaginative  forms.  Philosophy  with  the  full- 
est consciousness  of  the  necessary  truth  of  the  process, 
deduces  and  realizes  the  necessity  of  the  existence  of  an 
Absolute  Being,  and  the  further  necessity  that  this  being 
should  be  expressed  in  the  form,  first  of  an  active  proc- 
ess, and  then  of  a  process  which  takes  shape  in  the 
rational  lives  of  conscious  beings. 

Art  appeals  to  direct  perception,  and  so  involves  no  \r 
proof  of  the  revelation  which  it  actually  gives  of  the 
union  of  finite  and  infinite.  The  proof  which  religion 
gives  for  its  view  of  the  unity  of  God  and  man,  of  abso- 
lute and  of  finite,  takes  the  form  of  the  faith  of  an  or- 
ganized body  —  in  ancient  civilization,  the  faith  of  an  or- 
ganized nation,  in  modern  civilization  the  faith  of  a 
church.  There  are  lower  and  higher  forms  of  religion. 
But  in  any  case,  religion  normally  expresses  itself  in  the 
conscious  relation  of  a  socially  organized  body  of  be- 
lievers to  that  divine  life  which  expresses  itself  to  them 
and  in  them.  In  the  religious  consciousness,  the  Absolute 
Being  becomes,  in  fact,  aware  of  itself  in  and  through 
finite  conscious  beings.  This  religious  self-consciousness 
of  the  Absolute  reaches  its  highest  form  in  the  Christian 

229 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
consciousness,  which  Hegel  believed  himself  to  be  ex- 
pressing with  substantial  accuracy. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  self -consciousness  of  the  Abso- 
lute reaches  its  remaining  and  most  explicit  form  in 
philosophy,  where  the  proof  of  the  propositions  involved 
consists,  as  we  have  now  seen,  of  three  essential  parts : 

1.  The  general  idealistic  proof  that  thought  and  be- 
ing, as  Hegel  loves  to  say,  are  identical.  This  means  that 
a  being  whose  nature  is  other  than  that  which  the  in- 
ternal necessity  of  a  rational  thinking  process  requires 
and  defines,  is  impossible. 

2.  The  explicit   deduction  of  the  categories  which 
express  the  nature  of  thought,  and  so  the  ultimate  nature 
of  reality. 

3.  That  application  of  the  dialectical  method  already 
so  largely  illustrated  by  our  study  of  the  Phaenomenol- 
ogie.  This  application  proves,  according  to  Hegel,  that 
truth  can  only  be  expressed  as  a  synthesis  of  various 
views  which,  if  taken  in  their  abstraction,  are  self-con- 
tradictory, while  their  synthesis  itself  is  harmonious. 
Viewed  otherwise,  the  same  method  makes  clear  that  no 
finite  being  and  no  finite  truth  can  exist  or  be  defined  in 
itself,  and  apart  from  the  totality  of  truth;  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  infinite  being,  the  Absolute,  which  is 
simply  this  totality  of  dialectically  organized  truth,  can 
exist  only  as  expressed  in  finite  form. 

Whenever  these  propositions  are  brought  clearly  and 
in  their  true  synthesis  into  consciousness,  then  and  there 
the  Absolute  Being,  which  is  precisely  what  the  self  at 
once  aims  to  be,  and  in  principle  is,  becomes  conscious 
of  itself.  The  individual  man  who  thinks  becomes  aware, 
not  that  his  natural  individuality  is  of  any  importance, 
in  its  accidental  character,  as  a  means  of  determining 

230 


HEGEL'S  MATURE  SYSTEM 

truth,  but  that  in  him  the  Absolute  Being  has  become  and 
is  conscious  of  itself. 

The  philosophical  and  the  religious  consciousness,  phe- 
nomenally, exist  as  events  in  time.  They  are  expressions, 
however,  of  a  process  which  must  be  viewed  not  as  tem- 
poral but  as  eternal.  In  human  philosophy  and  in  hu- 
man religion,  the  Absolute  temporally  appears  as  being 
at  a  certain  moment  what  he  in  fact  timelessly  is,  con- 
scious of  himself.  For  in  the  Absolute  all  the  dialectical 
stages  which  time  separates,  are  eternally  present 
together. 


231 


LECTURE  X 

LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM  AND  ITS 
PRESENT  POSITION. 


I 


N  this  concluding  lecture  I  shall  indicate  some  of  the 
motives  which  have  determined  the  later  history  of 
idealism,  and  the  present  position  of  that  doctrine. 


I. 

The  textbooks  of  the  history  of  philosophy  describe 
with  greater  or  less  fulness  the  processes  which  led,  after 
Hegel's  death,  to  the  dissolution  of  his  school.  These 
processes  are  not  without  their  great  importance  when 
considered  with  reference  to  the  general  history  of  Eu- 
ropean civilization  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Unfortu- 
nately, however,  the  fortunes  of  the  Hegelian  "school" 
are  less  enlightening  than  we  could  wish  concerning  the 
genuine  merit  either  of  Hegel's  own  doctrine  or  of 
idealism  in  general.  The  questions  that  Kant  had  raised, 
and  that  the  intermediate  idealistic  systems  had  after  all 
quite  inadequately  developed,  were  not  thoroughly  con- 
sidered upon  their  merits  in  the  course  of  the  contro- 
versies that  attended  the  divisions  and  the  final  dissolu- 
tion of  the  Hegelian  school.  There  is  no  disrespect  to 
German  scholarship  involved  in  asserting  that  the  for- 
tunes of  university  controversies  in  Germany  are  seldom 
wholly  determined  by  an  absolutely  just  and  thorough- 
going consideration  of  the  merits  of  the  issues  which 

232 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
form  the  topic  of  such  controversies.  So  soon  as  a  school 
has  been  formed,  and  so  soon,  therefore,  as  the  for- 
tunes of  the  members  of  such  a  school  are-  bound  up  with 
their  success  or  failure  in  getting  or  in  keeping  the  atten- 
tion of  the  academic  public,  extraneous  motives  are  intro- 
duced into  the  life  of  scholarship.  The  influence  of  a 
school  may  give  for  a  time  undue  weight  to  the  published 
words  of  its  members.  The  consciousness  that  there  is  a 
school  sometimes  leads  for  a  while  to  an  unprofitable 
devotion  to  merely  external  forms  of  expression,  such  as 
have  come  to  characterize  the  members  of  the  school. 
When  opposition  arises  and  begins  to  be  successful,  it 
leads  only  too  frequently  not  only  to  a  rejection  of  the 
current  formulas  of  the  school  which  is  opposed  but  to  a 
tendency  to  believe  that  if  one  abandons  the  formulas, 
one  may  henceforth  simply  neglect  the  thoughts  that  lay 
behind  them.  Hardly  anything  in  fact  is  more  injurious 
to  the  life  of  scholarship  in  general,  and  especially  of 
philosophy,  than  the  too  strict  and  definite  organization 
of  schools  of  investigation.  The  life  of  academic  scholar- 
ship depends  upon  individual  liberty.  And  above  all  does 
the  life  of  philosophy  demand  the  initiative  of  the  indi- 
vidual teacher  as  well  as  that  of  the  individual  pupil. 
A  philosophy  merely  accepted  from  another  man  and  not 
thought  out  for  one 's  self  is  as  dead  as  a  mere  catalogue 
of  possible  opinions.  Philosophical  formulas  merely  re- 
peated upon  the  credit  of  a  master's  authority  lose  the 
very  meaning  which  made  the  master  authoritative.  The 
inevitable  result  of  the  temporary  triumph  of  an  appar- 
ently closed  school  of  university  teachers  of  philosophy, 
who  undertake  to  be  the  disciples  of  a  given  master,  leads 
to  the  devitalizing  of  the  master's  thought,  and  to  a 
revulsion,  in  the  end,  of  opinion.  People  with  any  orig- 

233 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
inality  and  independence  of  life  pass  on  to  new  interests. 
The  school  becomes  not  an  organization  but  a  mere  speci- 
men preserved  as  in  a  museum,  a  relic  of  what  was 
formerly  alive.  That  was  what  happened  before  very 
long  to  so  much  of  the  Hegelian  school  as  undertook  to 
remain  true  to  the  mere  tradition  of  the  master. 

Furthermore,  new  issues  came  to  occupy  the  public 
mind  as  the  nineteenth  century  proceeded.  Theological 
issues  due  in  part  to  the  new  development  in  the  history 
of  religion,  new  scientific  discoveries  occurring  all  over 
the  field  of  empirical  research,  new  political  interests, 
which  brought  men  out  of  sympathy  with  the  political 
conservatism  of  Hegel's  later  years — all  these  motives 
combined  to  make  men  feel  that  Hegel 's  methods,  identi- 
fied as  they  were  in  most  men's  minds  with  Hegel's  com- 
plex and  ill-understood  technical  vocabulary,  and  so  with 
the  mere  formalism  of  the  system,  were  inadequate  to 
cope  with  the  new  needs.  Hegel 's  own  confidence  of  tone, 
his  air  of  superiority,  his  far  too  manifest  willingness  to 
regard  his  own  formulations  as  final,  led  to  a  natural 
revolt.  And  because  Hegel's  form  of  idealism  had  been 
the  most  definite  and  for  a  while  the  most  successful, 
the  public  mind  confused  its  revised  estimate  of  the 
value  of  Hegel's  formulas  with  a  supposed  discovery 
of  the  inadequacy  of  the  entire  result  of  the  early  post- 
Kantian  idealism.  Men  became  increasingly  suspicious 
of  philosophical  formulation,  increasingly  hopeless  of 
success  in  the  construction  of  philosophical  systems,  and 
increasingly  devoted,  for  several  decades  after  1830,  to 
special  researches  in  the  rapidly  advancing  and  various 
branches  of  minute  scholarship  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
natural  science  on  the  other. 

Yet  the  influence  of  early  idealism  has  indeed  never 
234 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
passed  away  from  European  thought.  As  we  saw  in  our 
opening  discussion,  this  influence  has  been  Protean,  and 
has  appeared  in  the  most  various  places.  So  far  as  tech- 
nical philosophizing  is  concerned,  the  most  definite  influ- 
ence to  which  later  thought  has  been  subjected,  is  the 
influence  of  a  more  or  less  modified  Kantianism.  And  as 
thus  modified,  the  Kantian  doctrine  has  always  tended  to 
express  itself  in  the  form  of  what  one  might  call  an  em- 
pirical idealism, — an  idealism  of  which  the  movement 
called  " pragmatism"  or  "humanism,"  in  this  country 
and  in  England,  is  a  more  or  less  definite  instance.  An 
empirical  idealism  accepts,  in  the  first  place,  so  much  of 
Kant's  original  doctrine  as  insisted  that  our  knowledge 
is,  limited  to  phenomena.  It  then,  in  general,  recognizes 
that  our  interpretations  of  phenomena  involve  no  merely 
passive  acceptance  and  report  of  data  whose  origin  is 
wholly  external  to  ourselves  and  indifferent  to  the  inter- 
ests of  our  own  intelligence.  At  the  very  least  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  world  involves,  and  in  part  depends  upon, 
our  own  way  of  reacting  to  the  world.  A  reality  which 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  life  of  our  own  intelligence, 
and  which  is  so  external  to  us  as  to  be  entirely  independ- 
ent of  whether  we  know  it  or  not,  is  indeed,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  such  an  empirical  idealism,  meaningless 
and  to  be  neglected.  To  say  that  experience  is  our  guide, 
is  to  admit  with  Kant  that  the  conditions  which  deter- 
mine the  unity  and  the  connectedness  of  our  own  experi- 
ence are  conditions  in  terms  of  which  we  are  obliged  to 
interpret  reality;  so  that  what  we  call  real  is  inevitably 
adjusted  in  some  sense  to  the  demands  of  our  intelligence. 
The  recognition  of  this  general  thought  appears  in  the 
most  manifold  shapes  in  modern  discussion.  Positivists 
and  radical  empiricists,  formulators  of  new  religious 

235 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
doctrine  and  investigators  of  the  logic  of  science,  evolu- 
tionists and  various  modern  types  of  mystics,  are  thus 
found  in  often  decidedly  unconscious  agreement  which 
lies  beneath  their  most  marked  differences.  This  agree- 
ment relates  to  the  fact  that  our  world  is  not  merely 
given  to  us  from  without  but  is  interpreted  from  within, 
so  that  what  we  mean  by  reality  is  always  more  or  less 
idealized  by  us,  that  is,  interpreted  in  terms  of  our  own 
reason,  even  when  we  are  ourselves  most  resolved  to  be 
passive  and  to  accept  the  hard  facts  as  we  find  them.  Side 
by  side  with  the  question  of  Locke,  "What  are  we  men 
fitted  to  know?"  philosophy  must  always  face  the  ques- 
tion, "What  is  fit  to  be  known?"  And  in  terms  of  the 
latter  question  every  theory  of  reality,  however  ten- 
tative, however  skeptical,  however  radically  empiris- 
tic  it  tries  to  be,  will  always  more  or  less  consciously 
be  determined.  What  I  regard  as  the  permanent  tri- 
umph, not  of  any  one  idealistic  system,  but  of  the 
idealistic  spirit  in  the  history  of  human  thought,  is  indi- 
cated whenever  a  man  tries  to  tell  you  what  his  view 
about  the  real  world  which  our  sciences  study  and 
our  industrial  arts  endeavor  to  conquer,  seems  to  him  to 
be.  One  who  states  his  view  may  believe  that  he  is  a  hard 
and  fast  realist.  But  in  modern  times  one  of  the  reasons 
upon  which  he  is  likely  to  insist,  will  be  one  upon  which 
President  G.  Stanley  Hall  has  insisted  in  his  book  on 
Adolescence.  This  reason  will  be  that  a  faith  in  the  real 
world,  as  being  something  independent  of  the  minds  of 
us  fallible  mortals,  is  the  only  wholesome  doctrine,  the 
only  corrective  of  the  intellectual  excesses  of  youth,  the 
only  safeguard  against  visionary  and  possibly  morbid 
waywardness.  But  whoever  expresses  himself  thus  an- 
nounces an  explicitly  idealistic  theory,  since  he  defines 

236 

\ 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
the  nature  of  reality  in  terms  of  his  ideal  of  wholesome- 
ness.  President  Hall  has  his  idea  of  what  a  healthy  youth 
ought  to  be.  This  ideal  demands  that  a  youth,  or  anybody 
who  teaches  philosophy  to  the  youth,  should  view  the 
world  in  a  certain  way.  This  shows  that  the  view  in  ques- 
tion is  true.  Hence,  in  substance,  the  real  world  is  such 
as  to  embody  the  ideals  of  President  G.  Stanley  Hall. 
These  are  robust  ideals  unquestionably ;  but  the  man  who 
interprets  his  world  in  terms  of  them  is  a  philosophical 
idealist,  although  it  is  part  of  his  creed  that  he  must  not 
admit  this  fact  even  to  himself.  Such  is  a  characteristic 
instance  of  the  ways  in  which  the  idealistic  tendency  ap- 
pears in  modern  thought.  It  has  a  character  similar  to 
that  which  Hegel  in  the  Phaenomenologie  attributed  to 
the  eighteenth-century  Enlightenment.  Modern  idealism, 
like  that  former  rationalism,  is  a  sort  of  universal 
and  often  secret  infection.  Whoever  contends  against 
it  shows  that  he  is  already  its  victim.  He  is  under- 
taking to  determine  by  his  own  rational  ideals  what 
the  real  world  genuinely  is,  that  is,  how  it  ought  to  be 
conceived.  By  virtue  of  his  very  reasoning  he  confesses 
that  the  question, ' '  How  ought  I  to  conceive  the  real  ? "  is 
logically  prior  to  the  question,  "What  is  the  real  itself?" 
And  as  a  recent  German  writer,  Professor  Rickert,  has 
pointed  out,  the  ought  is  prior  in  nature  to  the  real,  or 
the  proposition:  "I  ought  to  think  thus,"  is  prior  to  the 
proposition :  ' '  This  is  so. ' '  This  whole  view  of  the  prob- 
lem of  reality  is  one  which  is  characteristic  of  idealism. 
This  is  why  the  idealistic  movement  in  later  European 
thought,  although  frequently  suppressed,  although  often 
deliberately  ignored,  has  been  as  constant  as  the  move- 
ment of  a  great  river  beneath  masses  of  winter  ice. 
Every  now  and  then  the  ice  breaks  or  melts,  and  the 

237 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
idealistic  tendency  comes  to  the  light  of  consciousness.  It 
is  irrepressible,  because  it  is  human.  It  is  true,  because 
truth  itself  is  inevitably  an  ideal,  which  cannot  possibly 
be  expressed  except  in  ideal  terms.  One  who  has  become 
aware  of  this  universal  significance  of  the  idealistic 
tendency,  becomes  indifferent  to  that  general  hostility 
towards  either  philosophy  or  idealism  which  is  so  often 
expressed  by  the  unreflective.  Let  anybody  tell  you 
why  he  refuses  to  interpret  his  world  in  idealistic  terms 
and  he  at  once  confesses  his  latent  idealism;  for  he  can 
express  himself  only  by  defining  his  ideal  of  scientific 
method,  or  by  confessing  his  practical  attitude  towards 
the  universe.  In  either  case  he  defines  his  real  world  in 
terms  of  his  ideal.  His  account  may  be  in  itself  adequate 
or  inadequate ;  in  any  case  he  is  an  idealist.  Let  him  say, 
as  is  most  customary,  that  he  rejects  all  a  priori  ideas  of 
things,  because  experience  is  his  only  guide,  and  you 
have  only  to  ask  him  what  he  means  by  experience  to 
discover  that  he  accepts  as  belonging  to  the  range  of 
human  experience  a  vast  collection  of  data  which  he  him- 
self has  never  personally  experienced  and  never 
hopes  to  experience.  For  however  carefully  I  observe,  my 
observations  are  but  a  fragment  of  that  experience  of 
mankind  in  terms  of  which  I  am  constantly  interpreting 
my  own  personal  experience.  Not  only  is  the  experi- 
ence of  mankind  indefinitely  wider  than  this  one  man's 
experience,  but  the  experience  of  mankind  is  also  some- 
thing that,  in  its  totality  or  in  any  of  its  larger  con- 
nections, is  never  present  in  the  experience  of  any  one 
man,  whoever  he  may  be.  How  then  does  any  one  of  us 
know  what  human  experience,  on  the  whole,  verifies  or 
proves?  I  answer,  "We  accept  as  human  experience  what 
certain  social  tests  require  us  to  regard  as  validly  re- 

238 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
ported,  as  significantly  related  to  our  own  observation, 
as  such  that  it  is  reasonable  to  view  this  as  experience, 
although  we  ourselves  do  not  directly  verify  the  fact  that 
it  is  experience.  Our  conception  of  human  experience 
is,  therefore,  itself  no  directly  verifiable  concept.  It  is 
determined  by  certain  ideal  motives  which  common  sense 
defines  in  terms  of  reasonableness^  and  which  the  most 
exact  scientific  method  can  never  define  in  other  than 
distinctly  ideal  terms.  It  meets  the  need  of  our  thinking 
processes  to  accept  as  empirical  fact  a  great  deal  that  we 
do  not  ourselves  verify  but  believe  other  men  to  have 
verified."  What  "William  James  calls  "the  senti- 
ment of  rationality:"  guides  every  such  acceptance  of 
other  men's  experience.  The  most  radical  empiricism  is, 
therefore,  full  of  idealistic  motives.  What  it  accepts  as 
the  verdict  of  experience  is  accepted  in  accordance  with 
the  demands  of  a  certain  sentiment  of  rationality^  whose 
validity  we  have  from  moment  to  momentja  accept  on 
the  ground  that  it  would  be  unreasonable,  that  it  would 
run  counter  to  our  ideal  of  truthfulness,  not  to  accept 
this  validity.  I  am  of  course  not  arguing  that  whatever 
phase  a  given  individual  chooses  as  his  guide  from  mo- 
ment to  moment  is  a  valid  guide.  I  am  merely  pointing 
out  that  no  criticism  of  the  faith  that  customarily  guides 
men  can  reduce  it  to  a  purely  empirical  test ;  because  no 
empirical  test  can  be  applied  unless  we  use  some  form 
of  faith,  some  sentiment  of  rationality,  in  terms  of  which 
we  define  and  accept  something  or  other  as  constituting 
the  experience  of  mankind.  Philosophy  must  indeed 
criticize  as  thoroughly  as  it  is  able  the  various  tests  that 
we  actually  use,  the  various  faiths  upon  which  men  act, 
the  Protean  forms  of  the  sentiment  of  rationality.  What 
I  insist  upon  is  that  such  a  criticism  must  itself  in  the 

239 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
long  run  be  guided  by  a  conscious  rational  ideal,  which 
when  it  becomes  conscious  must  appear  as  the  ideal  of 
our  own  intelligence,  of  the  self  that  speaks  through  us, 
of  the  reason  of  which  we  are  the  embodiment.  Hence 
whoever  appeals  to  experience,  or  to  any  other  test  re- 
garding what  is  real,  inevitably  interprets  the  world, 
whether  of  external  reality  or  of  human  experience,  in 
terms  of  the  demands  which  his  own  rational  conscious- 
ness formulates.  In  other  words,  whoever  has  a  world  at 
all  has  it  as  the  expression  of  ideal  demands  which  his 
intelligent  self  when  it  comes  to  consciousness  formulates 
as  its  own. 

For  my  part,  therefore,  I  am  fond  of  hearing  men 
formulate  a  condemnation  of  the  principles  of  idealism. 
The  more  definitely  they  formulate  their  condemnation, 
the  more  explicitly  do  they  define  their  world  as  the  ex- 
pression of  their  own  ideal  regarding  the  way  in  which  it 
is  rational  to  think  the  world.  Their  voice  is  the 
voice  of  idealism,  however  much  they  may  try  to 
disguise  it.  They  look  straight  outward ;  and  thereupon, 
as  it  were,  deny  that  they  have  any  eyes,  because  they 
see  no  such  objects  about  them.  They  assert  that  the  world 
is  in  essence  independent  of  the  motives  which  lead  them 
to  formulate  their  assertions ;  but  when  asked  why  their 
assertions  are  true  can  only  name  again  these  motives. 
They  say,  ''This  is  my  thought."  Yet  they  deny  that 
reality  is  in  any  wise  essentially  related  to  the  expression 
of  thought.  They  possess  then,  in  the  concrete,  the  spirit 
of  idealism.  I  welcome  them  as  exponents  of  this  spirit. 
They  simply  lack  self-consciousness  as  to  what  their  posi- 
tion is.  And  this  lack  is,  after  all,  very  much  their  own 
affair. 


240 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
II. 

So  far  I  have  pointed  out  only  the  most  general 
way  in  which  an  idealistic  tendency  finds  its  place  in 
recent  thought.  The  idealistic  character  of  recent 
philosophy  will  be  present  to  consciousness  in  so  far  as 
influences,  amongst  which  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Rea- 
son is  in  many  ways  the  most  prominent,  have  made  us 
apt  to  reflect  upon  the  presuppositions  of  every  inquiry, 
and  upon  the  way  in  which  every  formulation  of  the 
results  of  thought,  however  empirical  in  its  detail,  must 
receive  its  form  from  the  ideal  interests  which  consti- 
tute the  essential  character  of  our  own  reason,  and  which 
also  lie  at  the  basis  of  our  conduct.  Such  a  general  ideal- 
ism remains,  so  far,  characteristic  of  the  spirit  of 
modern  thought  rather  than  constitutive  of  any  one 
system  of  philosophy.  As  soon  as  one  attempts  to  formu- 
late this  idealistic  spirit  in  any  series  of  propositions 
about  the  world  of  our  experience  and  about  its  interpre- 
tation in  terms  of  the  rational  ideals  which  guide  our 
thinking  and  our  conduct,  great  opportunities  arise  for 
a  divergence  of  opinions  regarding  the  constitution  of 
this  world,  and  for  different  ways  of  emphasis  regarding 
the  relative  importance  of  the  various  interests  by  which 
our  estimate  of  the  world  is  determined.  A  philosophy  is 
inevitably  the  expression  of  a  mental  attitude  which  one 
assumes  towards  life  and  towards  the  universe.  This 
attitude  is  at  once  theoretical  and  practical — theoretical 
because  it  undertakes  to  define  opinions  concerning  the 
nature  of  things,  and  practical  because  every  effort  to 
define  opinions  is  essentially  an  expression  of  one's  in- 
terest in  the  universe,  and  so  of  one's  ideals  of  conduct. 
But  every  such  attitude  is  inevitably  colored  by  one's 

241 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
individuality.  It  is  a  person  who  interprets  things.  This 
person  inevitably  emphasizes  some  aspect  of  the  world 
which  nobody  else  emphasizes  in  the  same  way,  and  un- 
dertakes activities  which  are  in  some  respects  the  activi- 
ties of  no  other  person.  Now  if  truth  is  ideally  significant, 
and  if  ideals  are  always  centered  about  individual  per- 
sons, it  will  always  be  impossible  to  formulate  philosoph- 
ical doctrines  without  leaving  open  the  opportunity  for 
a  variety  of  individual  formulation.  This  does  not  mean 
that  the  truth  is  at  the  mercy  of  private  caprice,  or  that 
any  man  is  his  own  measure  of  all  things,  without  refer- 
ence to  other  men.  It  does  mean  that  the  whole  of  philos- 
ophy can  only  exist  in  an  essentially  social  form,  as  the 
synthesis  of  many — yes,  ideally  speaking,  of  an  infinite 
number — of  individual  and  personal  points  of  view, 
whose  diversity  will  be  due  to  the  fact  that  the  truth 
must  mirror  various  aspects  of  its  constitution  in  various 
ways  in  the  diverse  individuals.  The  world,  in  other 
words,  interprets  itself  through  us,  that  is,  through  what- 
ever rational  individuals  there  are.  The  interpretations 
cannot  be,  ought  not  to  be,  monotonously  uniform.  If 
they  were,  they  would  simply  be  abstractions,  and  so 
would  be  monotonously  inadequate  and  false.  Inadequate 
our  individual  interpretations  indeed  always  remain.  But 
they  need  not  be  monotonously  inadequate.  They  must 
properly  supplement  one  another. 

The  aim  of  philosophy  is,  then,  the  synthesis  of  these 
individual  varieties  of  interpretation.  Since  synthesis 
depends  first  upon  mutual  understanding,  and  then  upon 
mutual  correction  of  inadequacy,  our  instrument  as  we 
aim  towards  synthesis  must  involve  a  constant  effort 
to  find  what  is  common  to  various  experiences,  to 
various  individual  interpretations,  to  various  thoughtful 

242 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
processes.  Our  empirical  sciences  depend  essentially 
upon  confirming  one  man's  experiences  by  the  experi- 
ences of  other  men;  and  therefore  these  sciences  recog- 
nize as  objective  fact  only  what  can  be  verified  in  com- 
mon by  various  observers.  Similiarly  our  logical  and 
ethical  inquiries  are  concerned,  although  in  another  way 
than  the  one  followed  in  empirical  science,  with  the  effort 
to  define  common  and  universal  categories  and  laws 
which  express  the  will  of  all  men.  But  when  the  best  has 
been  done  thus  to  discover  the  common  features  of  our 
various  experiences  and  ideals,  a  most  significant  aspect 
of  the  universe  will  have  been  inevitably  omitted  in  every 
such  investigation.  And  this  will  be  precisely  the  aspect 
of  individuality  in  the  universe.  If  the  world  is  essen- 
tially a  life  of  will  and  of  thought  coming  to  an  individ- 
ual consciousness  of  itself  in  and  through  various  person- 
alities whose  social  unity  rests  upon  their  very  variety, 
the  work  of  discovering  the  truth  can  never  exhaustively 
be  reduced  to  the  work  of  finding  out  what  these  various 
personalities  find  or  will  merely  in  common.  They  all  in 
common  mean,  intend,  experience,  and  think  the  uni- 
verse. They  are  all,  therefore,  as  Leibnitz  said,  mirrors  of 
the  universe.  But  since  the  universe  is,  from  this  point 
of  view,  just  the  system  of  living  mirrors  itself,  what  is 
common  to  the  various  world-pictures  is  never  the  whole 
truth.  Hence  it  is  of  the  nature  of  a  philosophy  always  to 
be  in  presence  of  problems  which  forbid  a  final  system- 
atic formulation  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual 
philosopher,  just  because  these  problems  are  soluble  only 
from  the  point  of  view  of  other  individuals.  Philosophy, 
needing  especially,  as  it  does,  to  take  account  of  the  vari- 
ety of  individual  points  of  view  rather  than  of  common 
features,  is,  therefore,  much  less  able  than  are  the  empiri- 

243 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
cal  sciences  to  define  a  settled  result  upon  which  further 
investigation  may  be  based.  When  a  length  is  measured, 
one  is  looking  for  what  is  common  to  various  individual 
experiences  regarding  this  length.  That  common  element 
may  be  approximately  determined  once  for  all.  And 
upon  that  result  a  scientific  theory  of  physical  facts  may 
depend  for  further  progress.  A  philosophy,  however,  is 
essentially  concerned  with  an  unity  of  truth  which  can 
only  be  expressed  through  the  variety  of  individual 
points  of  view.  Hence  it  does  not  define  an  abstract  com- 
mon feature  of  various  experiences  as  a  fact  upon  which 
further  research  is  to  be  founded  merely  by  means  of  an 
accretion  of  further  facts  of  the  same  sort. 

Thus  everything  in  philosophy  is  properly  subject  to 
re-interpretation  from  new  individual  points  of  view. 
No  sincere  individual  point  of  view  is  absolutely  errone- 
ous, for  every  such  interpretation  is  a  portion  of  the  in- 
terpretation which  the  universe  gives  to  itself  through 
the  variety  of  individuals.  On  the  other  hand,  every  finite 
individual's  account  of  the  world  is  subject  to  re-inter- 
pretation and  in  the  progress  of  thinking  will  doubtless 
become,  so  to  speak,  absorbed  in  higher  syntheses.  At  any 
point  in  time  the  returns,  so  far  as  truth  is  concerned,  are 
not  all  in.  For  countless  individual  interpretations  have 
not  yet  been  made,  or  are  not  now  in  synthesis.  Hence 
philosophy  is  peculiarly  subject  to  the  reproach  of  being 
unfinished  and  unstable.  But  people  do  not  reproach  life 
with  instability  in  the  case  where  it  furnishes  us  with 
novelty  and  with  the  opportunity  for  significant  prog- 
ress. Truth  is  not  merely  capricious  and  subjective  be- 
cause new  individual  expressions  are  needed  to  supple- 
ment every  finite  interpretation.  It  is  the  value  and  not 
the  defect  of  philosophy  that  it  proceeds  not  by  mere 

244 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
accumulation  of  settled  discoveries,  but  by  a  constant 
re-interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  life.* 

III. 

When  I  now  speak,  therefore,  of  the  unsettled  prob- 
lems of  idealism,  I  do  so  not  in  a  spirit  of  mere  skepti- 
cism, and  not  with  the  intent  of  merely  confessing  igno- 
rance, and  still  less  with  a  disposition  to  assert  in  a 
dogmatic  way  just  how  I  suppose  these  problems  ought 
to  be  settled.  I  want  rather  to  suggest  some  of  the  condi- 
tions upon  which,  as  I  suppose,  our  interpretation  of 
these  problems  and  of  their  relation  to  life,  will  be  based. 

The  unsettled  problems  of  which  I  speak  are  of  a  na- 
ture which  the  foregoing  discussion  has  already  indi- 
cated. The  first  problem  which  the  various  forms  of  ideal- 
istic doctrine  have  endeavored  to  consider  is  one  that  in 
the  later  idealism,  since  Hegel's  death,  became  especially 
noticeable,  although  we  have  found  Hegel  dealing  with 
it.  It  is  the  problem  of  the  relation  between  the  rational 
and  the  irrational  features  of  reality.  The  world  of  our 
experience  becomes  a  rational  realm  to  us  in  so  far  as  we 
can  interpret  it  in  terms  of  ideas  that  adequately  express 
our  own  conscious  purpose.  Thus,  in  so  far  as  I  can  count 
objects,  and  can  operate  with  numbers  which  correspond 
to  the  results  of  such  counting,  the  facts  with  which  I 
deal  possess  for  me  what  might  be  called  the  numerical 
type  of  reasonableness.  In  so  far  as  I  can  measure  phe- 
nomena and  get  exact  results,  and  in  so  far  as  in  terms 
of  the  results  of  former  measurements  I  can  predict  the 
results  of  future  measurements,  I  deal  with  a  world  of 

*  In  this  whole  discussion  are  foreshadowed  some  elements  of 
the  later  theory  of  interpretation  as  expounded  in  The  Problem 
of  Christianity. — ED. 

245 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
experience — a  world  of  phenomena — which  possesses 
quantitative  reasonableness.  In  so  far  as  I  can  get  control 
of  phenomena,  as  for  instance  our  industrial  arts  get  a 
very  vast  and  socially  significant  control  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  human  experience,  so  that  we  can  define  in 
advance  what  we  want,  and  by  doing  a  definite  piece  of 
work  can  attain  the  required  results,  our  world  possesses 
what  may  be  called  practical  reasonableness.  If  we  pass 
directly  to  the  social  realm,  individual  men  show  them- 
selves as  reasonable  in  so  far  as  they  can  learn  to  live 
and  work  together,  not  destroying  or  suppressing  their 
individual  varieties,  but  winning  essential  harmony  even 
in  and  through  these  varieties.  Now  it  is  perfectly  plain 
that  for  the  civilized  man  a  considerable  portion  of  this 
world  of  experience  has  become  a  rational  world.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  equally  obvious  that  we  are  constantly 
in  presence  of  what  so  far  appears  to  us  as  an  irrational 
aspect  of  our  experience.  There  are  phenomena  which  we 
cannot  adequately  describe  and  predict  in  terms  of  our 
processes  of  numbering  or  of  measuring.  There  are 
countless  phenomena,  such  as  storms  and  earthquakes 
and  diseases  and  criminal  propensities,  which  we  cannot 
as  yet  control.  Social  life  is  a  constant  contention  with 
the  unreasonable  forces  which  tend  toward  social  an- 
archy. The  individuality  of  every  man  appears  at  once  as 
the  most  reasonable  and  as  the  most  unreasonable  feature 
about  him — the  most  reasonable  because  what  we  most 
value  in  humanity,  what  love  most  emphasizes,  what  our 
social  longing  most  idealizes,  what  our  rational  passion 
of  liberty  most  insists  upon  is  the  individual  human 
being,  so  that  whatever  gives  our  reasonable  life  its 
value,  its  friends  to  love,  its  task  to  perform  is  something 
individual.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  individuality  of 

246 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
everybody  appears  also  as  the  unreasonable  aspect  of 
human  nature  in  so  far  as  individuality  means  whim, 
caprice,  waywardness,  oddity,  eccentricity  —  in  brief, 
whatever  about  any  human  being  involves  rebellion 
against  order  and  intrusion  upon  the  will  of  one  's  fellows. 
Thus  our  world  of  experience  is  a  synthesis  of  what  ajk- 
pear  to  us  at  present  rational  and  irrational  features* 
The  history  of  society,  and  in  particular  of  religion,  of 
science,  and  of  philosophy,  appears  to  us  as 


reason  and  unreason.  The  world  is,  then,  at  least  in  ap- 
pearance irrational  in  so  far  as  it  refuses  at  any  moment 
to  express  our  meaning,  to  embody  the  categories  of  our 
thought,  to  realize  the  ideals  of  our  conduct,  to  permit 
the  unity  of  consciousness  to  come  into  synthesis  with  the 
brute  facts  of  sense  and  of  emotion.  Now  what  a  realistic 
philosophy  would  interpret  as  the  contrast  between  in- 
dependent facts  and  our  subjective  ideas,  an  idealistic 
philosophy  must  conceive  as  the  contrast  between  the 
rational  and  the  irrational  elements  or  aspects  of  experi- 
ence and  of  life. 

In  the  history  of  idealism  in  the  nineteenth  century 
the  conflict  between  rationalism  and  irrationalism  ap- 
peared as  the  principal  motive  for  tife  abandonment  of 
systems  such  as  Hegel  's,  and  for  the  tendency  to  attempt 
constantly  new  formulations  of  the  idealistic  conception 
of  the  universe.  Hegel,  especially  as  interpreted  by  the 
formalists  of  his  own  school,  appeared  to  the  generation 
which  followed  his  death  as  an  extreme  rationalist  who 
regarded  the  world  as  through  and  through  the  expres- 
sion of  rational  ideals  which  the  philosopher  could  for- 
mulate. The  idealistic  opposition  to  Hegel  later  received 
its  classical  representation  in  the  doctrine  of  Schopen- 
hauer. Schopenhauer,  whose  doctrine  did  not  become  in- 

247 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
fluential  until  after  1850,  is  the  classical  irrationalist  of 
the  rationalistic  movement.  For  him,  the  universe  has  a 
two-fold  aspect.  It  is  the  world  as  idea,  that  is,  the  world 
as  consciousness  defines  and  observes  it.  In  so  far,  it  is 
a  world  subject  to  the  categories,  or  again  on  its  highest 
level,  it  is  the  world  as  the  artist  views  and  portrays  it. 
Thus,  it  is  either  a  world  subject  to  law,  or  a  world  in- 
stinct with  beautiful  types  of  life.  So  far,  then,  it  is  the 

%/ world  of  reason,  or  at  least  of  what  we  may  venture  to 
call  ideally  significant  unity.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the 
world  possesses  quite  a  different  aspect.  It  is  the  world 
of  the  will.  The  will  is  the  principle  of  irrational  desire, 

v  of  unrest,  of  brute  fact,  of  conflict.  The  world  as  will 
is  always  deeper  than  the  world  as  idea.  The  world  as 
idea  is  the  world  of  forms,  intellectual  or  artistic — the 

*  world  as  known  to  the  rational  inquirer,  or  to  the  con- 
templative artist.  But  the  world  as  will  is  the  material 
aspect  of  things,  which  appears  in  our  experience  as 
brute  fact,  as  mere  data,  as  the  restless  incompleteness 
of  every  phase  of  life.  The  world  as  will  is  essentially 
bad,  base,  unideal,  incomprehensible,  unfathomable.  The 
world  as  idea  is  the  world  of  the  apparition  of  this  in- 
comprehensible principle  in  forms  which  can  either  be 
understood  or  contemplated,  but  which  can  thus  be  un- 
derstood or  contemplated  only  in  their  relative,  their 
imperfect,  or  their  merely  phenomenal  aspect.  No  ideal- 
'  ism  can,  therefore,  hope  to  see  the  world  as  a  rational 
whole.  It  is  not  a  rational  whole.  Consciousness  is  merely 
a  flickering  light  that  shows  to  us  in  a  more  or  less  defi- 
nite form  the  beautiful  surface  of  the  waste  ocean  of  the 
unconscious  and  irrational  will. 

That  this  view  expresses  an  aspect  which  experience 
constantly   forces   upon   our   attention,    has   just   been 

248 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
pointed  out.  Schopenhauer  was  not  alone  in  denning  the 
outcome  of  idealism  in  such  terms.  Schelling,  in  his  later 
period  of  thought  from  1809,  when  he  published  an  essay 
on  the  nature  of  free  will  to  the  close  of  his  career,  em- 
phasized the  presence  of  an  irrational  principle  in  the 
universe  to  which  human  caprice  and  the  brute  facts  of 
experience  are  due.  In  later  idealism,  von  Hartmann  is 
a  notable  example  of  one  who  conceives  the  nature  of 
things  in  terms  of  a  fundamental  irrationalism.  The  age 
of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  emphasizing  as  it  has  done 
the  struggle  for  existence,  has  given  weight  to  the  con- 
siderations upon  which  Schopenhauer  and  von  Hart- 
mann have  insisted. 

IV. 

Closely  connected  with  considerations  of  this  type  are 
those  which  must  have  been  near  to  your  minds  as  you 
followed  my  sketch  of  the  Hegelican  doctrine.  Is  the 
idealistic  philosopher  able  to  define  in  any  sense  a  priori 
the  constitution  which  things  must  have?  Or  is  he,  like 
the  student  of  the  special  sciences,  confined  to  interpret- 
ing the  results  of  human  experience  ?  Hegel  was  regarded 
by  his  contemporaries  and  successors  as  an  extravagant 
apriorist,  who  endeavored  to  deduce  the  facts  of  nature 
and  of  history  out  of  his  own  inner  consciousness.  In 
truth,  Hegel  made  a  sharp  distinction  between  our  learn- 
ing by  experience  as  we  do  learn  what  occurs  and  what 
has  occurred,  and  our  interpreting,  in  the  light  of  the 
categories  of  our  philosophy,  the  total  meaning  of  this 
result  of  experience.  Hegel  recognized  that  we  learn  of 
our  world  through  experience,  and  that  unless  something 
is  first  present  in  experience  and  in  life,  it  is  useless  for 
philosophy  to  try  to  interpret  what  this  something 
means.  But  he  had,  on  the  other  hand,  an  unquestionably 

249 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
extravagant  disposition  to  regard  his  philosophical  in- 
terpretation of  the  meaning  of  experience  as  actually 
adequate  to  the  whole  of  it.  Meanwhile,  the  form  of  the 
philosophical  interpretation  must,  so  he  held,  be  inter- 
ly  rational,  that  is,  such  as  to  make  the  connections 
clear  to  the  philosopher  as  he  proceeds.  But  this  internal 
form  of  the  philosophical  system  will  in  so  far  be 
a  priori.  Philosophy  will  thus  be  a  reconstruction  of  ex- 
perience in  terms  which  the  inner  necessity  of  things  de- 
termines. Hegel's  extravagant  confidence  was  that  such 
an  interpretation  had  actually  been  accomplished  by  his 
philosophy.  He  did  not  suppose  that  if  we  had  never 
been  enlightened  by  experience  we  could  deduce  a  priori 
the  nature  of  the  world.  But  he  did  suppose  that  experi- 
ence had  at  last  attained  a  point  of  view  from  which  it 
is  possible  to  reconstruct,  by  an  a  priori  method,  pre- 
cisely so  much  of  the  meaning  of  experience  as  is  in  fact 
rational. 

However,  as  we  have  already  seen,  Hegel  himself  re- 
cognized a  certain  truth  in  irrationalism.  It  was  an  es- 
sential  feature  of  his  dialectical  method  that  he  should 
recognize  such  a  truth.  Reason  is  for  him  an  active  proc- 
ess. It  therefore  involves  the  aspect  which  Schopen- 
hauer  emphasized  as  the  will.  For  Hegel  as  for  Schopen- 
hauer, the  life  of  the  will  is  essentially  a  life  of  contest. 
It  is  necessary  that  the  will  should  be  in  conflict  with  its 
own  opponent.  But  the  opponent  of  the  will  is  at  any 
stage  the  irrational,  the  undesired,  the  unintended,  the 
apparently  brutal  fact  over  which  the  will  at  each  stage 
has  to  win  its  way  by  an  act  of  conquest.  Hence  the  dif- 
ference between  Hegel  and  Schopenhauer  is  essentially 
this :  Hegel  insists  upon  the  thesis  that  it  is  rational  for 
the  reason,  being  as  it  is  both  practical  and  theoretical, 

250 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
to  meet  and  to  conquer  an  irrational  element  in  its  ex- 
perience. Or  again,  there  is  an  a  priori  necessity  that  we 
should  constantly  meet  in  our  finite  experience  with  con- 
tents which  we  cannot  as  yet  deduce  a  priori.  To  express 
it  otherwise,  there  is  an  a  priori  necessity  that  the  a 
priori  demands  of  the  reason  should  always  find  over 
against  them  an  empirical  element  of  brute  fact  which 
cannot  be  deduced  a  priori.  In  still  other  words,  Hegel 
recognizes  an  element  of  objective  chance  in  the  nature 
of  things.  It  belongs  to  the  dialectic  of  his  system  to  do 
so.  In  this  way  Hegel  is  indeed  an  apriorist.  He  is  an  ex- 
travagant apriorist,  in  so  far  as  he  is  confident  of  the 
finality  of  his  own  interpretation  of  nature  and  of  life, 
and  in  so  far  as  he  actually  neglects  a  great  number  of 
facts  upon  which  experience  has  taught  the  rest  of  us  to 
lay  great  stress.  But  Hegel  has  a  place  for  empiricism, 
and  a  place  for  the  irrational  in  his  system. 

It  belongs  to  the  spirit  of  the  time  that  the  later  ideal- 
ism should  emphasize,  as  every  reasonable  idealist  now 
does,  the  constant  claims  of  experience  upon  the  phi- 
losopher. To  recognize  this  is  simply  to  point  out  that 
no  individual  interpretation  can  be  final.  On  the  other 
hand,  every  idealist  must  emphasize  the  fact  that  we  can- 
not and  do  not  move  a  step  in  our  thinking  without  using 
the  a  priori  that  is,  without  appealing  to  that  which  for 
internal  reasons  we  consciously  regard  as  the  rationally 
thoughtful  way  of  interpreting  the  present  facts  of  ex- 
perience. I  now  recognize  and  acknowledge  the  existence 
of  your  minds  as  relatively  external  to  my  own  mind. 
But  this  recognition,  this  acknowledgment,  is  not  now 
for  me  a  mere  acceptance  of  a  brute  fact  of  sense.  For 
your  experience  is  just  now  no  experience  of  mine.  My 
acknowledgment  that  you  are  there  in  my  world  is  an 

251 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
interpretation.  And  for  this  interpretation  I  can  give  no 
reasons  which  are  not  in  part  a  priori,  reasons  definable 
in  terms  of  an  internal  necessity  which  my  consciousness 
makes  manifest  to  itself  in  its  own  way.  Similarly,  my 
own  past  and  my  own  future,  the  very  existence  of  any 
world  beyond  the  present,  the  assertion  of  any  fact  in 
heaven  or  in  earth,  depends  indeed  in  part  upon  the 
momentary  pressure  of  experience,  but  equally  upon  an 
internally  necessary  and  a  priori  demand  of  reason. 

V. 

I  have  now  briefly  reviewed  two  great  problems  of  re- 
cent idealism,  that  of  the  relation  of  the  rational  to  the 
irrational  aspect  oi  experience,  and  that  of  the  relation 
of  empiricism  and  the  acceptance  of  truth  as  a  priori, 
that  is,  as  internally  necessary.  No  single  formulation  of 
an  answer  to  either,  of  these  problems  will  ever  prove, 
within  the  range  of  our  human  experience,  to  be  ade- 
quate. For  each  problem  will  constantly  present  itself  in 
new  aspects  as  life  and  as  individuality  diversify.  But 
already  I  have  indicated  the  spirit  in  which  I  think  we 
must  always  meet  these  problems.  As  a  fact,  both  prob- 
lems involve  a  distinction  of  aspect.  "We  must  not  con- 
found these  aspects.  Yet  we  must  not  divide  the  sub- 
stance of  life  into  two  different  and  ultimate  sorts  of 
truth  or  reality  in  order  to  be  just  to  the  diversity  of 
aspect. 

First,  as  to  the  problem  of  the  a  priori.  The  whole 
world  is  indeed  known  to  me  by  experience,  precisely  in 
so  far  as  experience  restlessly  awakens  me  to  the  fact  that 
there  is  something  still  before  me  to  acknowledge  and 
something  still  before  me  to  do.  But  the  whole  world  is 
inevitably  defined  by  me  at  any  instant  a  priori,  in  so  far 

252 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
as  my  present  experience  is  meaningless  except  with  ref- 
erence to  facts  which  I  regard  as  past  or  as  future,  or 
as  yonder  in  time  or  in  space,  as  matters  of  possible  ex- 
perience, not  just  now  verifiable,  as  matters  belonging  to 
other  individual  lives  than  mine,  as  contents  finding 
their  place  in  a  certain  conceived  order  of  things.  The 
only  warrant  for  such  acknowledgment  of  what  is  not 
given  must  be  found  by  me  in  a  priori  terms,  and  must 
be  ultimately  warranted  by  the  consideration  that  unless 
I  acknowledge  a  realm  of  facts  not  now  verified  by  me, 
I  simply  contradict  myself  and  reduce  my  experience 
to  a  meaningless  chaos.  From  this  point  of  view,  your 
laboratory  man,  or  your  field  naturalist,  or  your  business 
man  in  the  market  place  or  your  man  of  common  sense, 
or  even  your  light-hearted  child  at  play,  is  as  much  an 
apriorist  as  the  philosopher.  For  all  these  dwell  in  a 
world  that  is  to  them  no  mere  foil*™  but  a  construction. 


—  »--  *          '  * 

This  is  the  eternal  truth  of  Kant's  deduction  of  the  cat- 
egories. This  is  the  true  sense  in  which  the  universe  is 
interpreted  by  everybody  as  the  expression  of  the  more 
or  less  conscious  demand  of  the  rational  self.  In  this 
spect  the  world  is  always  a  conceptual  construct,  in  other 
words,  a  world  known  a  priori.  The  ultimate  warrant  for 
such  an  interpretation  is  always  the.  principle  of  contra- 
diction,  the  principle  of  inner  necessity.  For  St.  Augus- 
tine long  ago  formulated  the  matter:  If  I  assert  that 
there  is  no  truth,  I  assert  that  it  is  true  that  there  is  no 
truth,  and  consequently  contradict  myself.  But  my  truth 
is  always  my  interpretation  of  my  situation,  and  is  thus 
in  its  form  a  priori,  although  its  matter  is  determined  by 
whatever  feelings,  images,  sensations  and  interests  I 
chance  to  find  uppermost  at  any  moment  of  my  indi- 
vidual life.  We  are  all  therefore  both  empiricists  and 

253 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
apriorists.  And  whenever  you  find  a  man  condemning  in 
a  sweeping  way  all  a  priori  construction  as  inadequate 
to  discover  the  constitution  of  the  hard  and  fast  realm 
of  facts,  you  will  always  find  upon  looking  closer  that 
hat  he  then  means  by  his  hard  and  fast  world  of  facts 
is  known  to  him  just  then  in  terms  of  a  conceptual  con- 
struction which  he  then  and  there  acknowledges  upon 
a  priori  grounds.  I  am  very  willing,  then,  to  hear  people 
condemn  the  a  priori ;  for  I  notice  that  they  do  so  upon 
a  priori  grounds. 

A  closely  analogous  consideration  must  guide  our  at- 
titude towards  the  other  problem,  that  of  the  relation  be- 
tween the  rational  and  the  irrational  aspects  of  the 
world.  The  fact,  for  instance,  that  my  friend  is  dead,  and 
that  I  shall  never  see  him  in  this  world  again,  or  that 
popular  tumult  rages  in  Russia  in  irrational  madness, 
may  be  to  my  mind  an  opaque  and  in  so  far  an  irrational 
fact.  Yet  I  always  acknowledge  that  fact,  save  from  this 
moment  outward,  as  something  whose  reality  is  acknowl- 
edged by  me  upon  rational,  that  is,  internally  necessary 
grounds.  My  world  of  fact  is  to  me,  therefore,  at  once 
rational  and  irrational.  It  at  once  expresses  my  meaning, 
fulfils  my  rational  demands,  and  disappoints  me,  limits 
me,  forces  upon  me  what  I  do  not  now  comprehend.  But 
I  further  observe,  that  my  acknowledgment  of  the  irra- 
tionality of  a  fact  is  always  an  instance  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  my  comprehension  of  that  fact.  My  conflict 
with  the  fact  is  at  the  same  time  a  conflict  with  the  im- 
perfection of  my  own  insight.  There  are  facts  which  at 
first  appear  to  me  irrational,  such  as  the  puzzling  condi- 
tions to  which  I  must  conform  when  I  learn  the  rudi- 
ments of  a  new  art.  Yet  when  I  learn  the  art,  I  learn  to 
control  and  thus  to  rationalize  the  very  facts  that  I  also 

254 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
learn  to  acknowledge  as  real.  When  one  learns  to  ride 
a  bicycle,  there  are  moments,  perhaps  days,  when 
nothing  appears  so  irrational  as  the  physical  behavior  of 
this  unaccustomed  object,  which  falls  over  when  you 
move  with  the  intention  of  keeping  it  upright,  and  runs 
towards  what  you  most  try  to  avoid.  Later  on,  through 
conflict,  this  unreasonableness  of  the  object  becomes  *jX* 
transformed  into  its  controllable  trustworthiness  of  law- 
ful  behavior.  Facts  may,  therefore,  be  relatively  irra-  *  A, 
tional,  their  irrationality  meaning  simply  my  imperfect 
insight  into  my  world,  my  imperfect  possession  of  my 
owrTprlnciples  of  UOiiduct.  The  problem  of  irrationality, 
like  the  problem  of  £sil,  which  is  an  instance  of  the  prob- 
lem of  irrationality,  always  comes  to  us  so  joined  with 
the  problem  of  our  own  inadequacy  of  knowledge  that 
we  can  never  tell  how  far  a  supplementing  of  our  insight 
will  lead  us  to  an  acknowledgment  of  the  reasonable- 
ness of  what  we  first  find  unreasonable.  But  you  may 
very  rightly  say  that  thus  the  problem  of  the  unreason- 
able becomes  transferred  to  ourselves,  and  the  question 
why  we  are  so  finite,  so  ignorant,  and  so  unreasonable 
still  remains  insoluble.  But  here  appears  a  considera- 
tion which  our  historical  sketch  has  especially  prepared 
us,  in  this  closing  summary,  to  estimate. 

The  dialectical  method,  as  we  remember,  has  especially  y  \/  y 
insisted  upon  the  fact  that  the  practical  life  of  the  spirit 
depends  upon  developing  and  overcoming  opposition. 
One  may  regard  this  doctrine  of  the  older  idealists  either 
as  an  empirical  generalization  from  historical  and  psy- 
chological phenomena,  or  as  an  a  priori  rational  prin- 
ciple. For  reasons  which  I  have  indiciated  in  the  fore- 
going, I  myself  regard  it  as  possessing  equally  both  of 
these  characters.  The  value  of  antithesis  and  of  conflict 

255 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
is  verifiable  empirically  in  very  numerous  instances.  Not 
only  does  the  will  actually  seek  conflict,  as  both  Hegel 
and  Schopenhauer  emphasize;  but  despite  Schopen- 
hauer's insistence  that  such  voluntary  conflict  belongs 
to  the  merely  irrational  side  of  the  will,  we  must  main- 
tain with  Hegel  that  extremely  lofty  rational  interest 
both  of  the  will  and  of  the  whole  spiritual  nature  are 
such  as  to  demand  the  presence  of  conflicting  motives 
and  even  of  essentially  tragic  contests  in  all  the  higher 
\1  {  spiritual  life.  The  truth,  whatever  it  is,  is  certainly  not 
expressible  in  merely  abstract,  or  in  merely  harmonious 
terms.  If  it  is  the  truth  of  life,  i.e.,  if  the  truth  is  a  living 
and  not  a  merely  bloodless  realm  of  abstract  categories, 
then  the  truth  must  involve  issues,  struggles,  conquests, 
and  conquests  over  aspects  of  life  that,  when  viewed  in 
their  abstraction,  are  distinctly  evil  and  irrational.  If 
once  this  principle,  which  Hegel's  Phaenomenologie  so 
richly  illustrates,  is  admitted  as  essentially  valid,  then 
it  is  surely  difficult  to  estimate  the  extent  to  which  the 
existence  of  apparently  irrational  elements  and  facts 
can  exist  in  the  world  not  merely  as  forming  an  excep- 
tion to  the  reasonableness  of  things,  but  as  facts  which 
seen,  as  it 'were,  from  above,  and  in  their  genuine  unity 
with  all  other  facts,  are  actually  essential  to  the  unity  of 
things  and  to  the  rationality  of  the  universe.  From  this 
point  of  "view  it  seems  at  least  possible  to  say  that  the 
union  of  rational  and  irrational  or  evil  facts  in  the  uni- 
verse at  large  is  itself,  when  the  universe  is  taken  in  its 
wholeness,  an  essentially  rational  union,  so  that  the  evils 
are  there  to  be  conquered  simply  because  otherwise  the 
triumphant  reasonableness,  which  from  an  absolute  point 
of  view  is  expressed  in  such  conquest,  would  be  impos- 
sible. Perhaps,  then,  just  as  all  knowledge  is  empirical 

256 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 
and  all  knowledge  of  significant  facts  is  inevitably  also 
a  priori ;  so  now  we  may  say  that  the  world  is  a  rational 
whole,  and  yet  any  finite  fact  in  it,  if  viewed  in  its  iso-    j( 
lation,  if  viewed  with  forgetfulness  of  its  relation  to  the 
absolute  point  of  view,  may  to  any  extent  be  evil  and  ir- 
rational. The  narrow  life  may  be  base ;  yet  through  a  con- 
quest over  this  baseness  the  larger  life  with  which  this 
narrow  life,  as  an  expression,  is  bound  up  may  be  tri- 
umphantly rational. 

VI. 

The  suggestion  of  any  such  thesis  brings  us  to  another 
question,  the  last  which  we  have  time  to  consider.  Ideal- 
ism has  appeared  in  recent  thought  partly  as  pragma- 
tism, insisting  that  all  truth  is  practical,  that  is,  is  true 
by  virtue  of  its  practical  relation  to  some  finite  need.  For 
many  thinkers,  pragmatism  is  essentially  opposed  to  an 
absolutism  which  suggests,  or  perhaps  positively  main- 
tains, that  the  world  in  its  wholeness  has  an  absolute 
constitution  in  the  light  of  which  all  finite  truth  must  be 
interpreted.  Now  I  myself  am  far  from  pretending  to 
possess  any  peculiar  revelation  as  to  what  the  content  of 
absolute  truth  may  be.  But  I  do  maintain  that  a  pragma- 
tist  to  whom  whatever  is  true,  is  true  relatively,  that  is, 

>^ 


with  reference  to  some  finite  need  or  definition,  is  actu- 


ally  as  much  in  need  as  I  am  of  attributing  to  his  world 
whatever  constitution  it  actually  possesses.  Truth  meets 
needs ;  truth  is  also  true.  Of  these  two  propositions  I  con- 
ceive idealism  to  be  constituted.  If  one  attempts  to  de- 
fine a  world  of  m°rely  relative  truth,  this  world,  as  soon 
as  you  define  it  in  its  wholeness,  becomes  once  more  your 
absolute,  your  truth  that  is  true.  In  acknowledging 
truth  we  are  indeed  meeting,  or  endeavoring  to  meet,  a 
need  which  always  expresses  itself  in  finite  form.  But 

257 


T 


LECTURES  ON  MODERN  IDEALISM 
this  need  can  never  be  satisfied  by  the  acknowledgment 
of  anything  finite  as  the  whole  truth.  For,  as  Hegel  well 
insisted,  the  finite  is  as  such  self-contradictory,  dialec- 
tical, burdened  with  irrationality.  It  passes  away.  Mean- 
while it  struggles  with  its  own  contradictions,  and  will 
not  be  content  with  acknowledging  anything  less  than  its 
own  fulfilment  in  an  Absolute  Life  which  is  also  an  abso- 
lute truth.  That  many  are  not  conscious  of  this  need,  I 
agree.  Most  men  have  no  great  amount  of  consciousness 
with  regard  to  anything.  But  that  all  are  discontent  with 
their  finitude,  is  a  matter  of  common  experience.  I  inter- 
pret this  as  implying,  and  as  inevitably  implying,  that 
it  is  the  truth  that  every  finite  life  actually  finds  its  f  ul- 
filment  in  an  Absolute  Life,  in  which  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being.  I  maintain,  and  have  elsewhere  at 
length  argued,  that  to  attempt  to  deny  this  Absolute  Life, 
is  simply  to  reaffirm  it  under  some  new  form.  That  the 
Absolute  Life  has  to  be  conceived  as  the  absolute  union  of 
experience  and  of  rational  necessity,  of  freedom  and  of 
law,  of  infinitude  and  finitude,  of  what  we  regard  as  ir- 
rational and  of  what  we  view  as  rational,  I  have  else- 
where maintained  at  length.  I  am  not  here  to  preach  my 
own  doctrine.  But  I  may  assert  that  personally  I  am  both 
a  pragmatist  and  an  absolutist,  that  I  believe  each  of 
these  doctrines  to  involve  the  other,  and  that  therefore 
I  regard  them  not  only  as  reconcilable  but  as  in  truth 
reconciled. 

Herewith,  in  sketching  these  problems  of  later  ideal- 
ism I  have  also  suggested  what  I  take  to  be  the  present 
position  of  idealistic  doctrine.  And  herewith,  in  conse- 
quence, the  wholly  fragmentary  and  illustrative  task  of 
these  present  lectures  is  completed.  Something  may  have 
been  gained  by  these  fragmentary  discussions,  if  they 

258 


LATER  PROBLEMS  OF  IDEALISM 

have  suggested  that  idealistic  philosophy  is  not  merely  a  ^ 

collection  of  eccentric  opinions  held  by  lonely  students, 
but  despite  the  eccentricity  and  the  loneliness  of  many   ; 
of  the  phases  of  its  formulation,  is  not  only  in  essential  ^  > 
sympathy  with  the  rational  study  of  experience  and  with 
the  practical  ideals  of  life,  but  is  at  least  unconsciously 
what  I  hope  it  will  more  and  more  consciously  become, 
the  expression  of  the  very  soul  of  our  civilization.  For 
we  all  not  only  gather  but  interpret  experience.  And  to 
interpret  experience  is  to  regard  facts  as  the  fulfilment  ^ 

of  rational  ideals.  And  we  all  not  only  accept  life  but 
try  to  conquer  its  irrationality,  and  to  idealize  its  fini-  ;  N\  ^ 
tude.  So  to  act  is  essentially,  whether  we  know  it  or  "^ 
not,  to  view  the  temporal  as  the  symbol  and  the  likeness 
of  the  eternal. 


259 


INDEX 


Absolute,  The,  54;  social  mo- 
tives explaining  its  use,  55; 
concept  of,  Lecture  III,  pas- 
sim; as  problem  for  the  post- 
Kantians,  71  ff . ;  in  relation 
to  theology,  75;  as  Schell- 
ing's  "Identity"  or  "Indif- 
ference," 133;  art  as  the  ap- 
parition of,  134;  nature  of, 
in  Hegel 's  Phenomenology, 
167  ff.;  Hegel's  theory  of, 
as  evolutionary  and  non-tem- 
poral, 170;  characteristics  of, 
in  contrast  with  finite  self, 
174  ff. ;  in  terms  of  the  reli- 
gious consciousness,  209  ff. ; 
in  relation  to  Hegel's  theory 
of  truth,  215  ff. ;  as  Idee, 
221 ;  as  life  and  truth,  257  ff. 

Adolescence,  by  Stanley  Hall, 
236. 

1 '  Animals,  The  Intellectual, ' ' 
in  Hegel 's  Phenomenology, 
196  ff. 

Antigone,  203. 

Antinomies,  56,  80,  154. 

Antithetical  Method.  See  Dia- 
lectical Method. 

Aristotle,  46,  214. 

Art,  Schelling  's  interpretation 
of,  121,  134;  Hegel's  view  of, 
210,  229. 

Attention,  26. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  127  f. 
" Beobachtende    Vernunft,"   in 
Hegel's  Phenomenology,  189. 


Bradley,  2,  110. 

Browning,  140  f . 

Byron,  83  f.;  quoted,  192  f. 

Carlyle,  147. 

Categories,  19  ff. ;  in  relation  to 
experience,  25,  3?  ff.,  as  a 
priori  forms,  45;  Aristotle's 
table  of,  46;  Hegelian,  174, 
220  ff. 

Causation,  Kant's  category  of, 
20. 

Cervantes,  195. 

Christian  mystics,  75. 

Conciousness,  as  stage  in  the 
Phenomenology,  150;  its  va- 
rious Gestalten,  151  ff. ;  its 
meaning  defined,  156;  nature 
of  absolute,  in  Phenomenol- 
ogy, 167  ff. ;  theoretical  and 
practical  stages  of,  171  ff. ; 
social  character  of  absolute, 
175;  savage,  illustrated,  176; 
of  master  and  slave,  177  f . ; 
of  stoicism,  179;  the  unhappy, 
180  ff. ;  analysis  of  pleasure- 
seeking,  190,  of  the  roman- 
tic reformer,  193  f.,  of  the 
knight-errant,  195,  of  the 
' '  intellectual  animals, ' '  195 
ff.;  social  types  of,  199  ff.; 
religious,  209  ff. 

Contradiction,  characteristic  of 
dialectical  method,  89;  in 
self -consciousness,  90  ff. ;  in 
relation  to  truth,  94  ff . ;  not 


261 


INDEX 


blunders,  95  f . ;  in  Hegel 's 
Phenomenology,  15  Iff.;  in 
Hegel's  theory  of  truth, 
214  ff. 

Cousin,  V.,  2. 

Critique  of  Practical  "Reason, 
37,  39. 

Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  sig- 
nificance of  its  title,  65;  in- 
fluence on  recent  philosophy, 
241.  See  also  Deduction  of 
the  Categories. 

Dante,  192. 

Deduction  of  the  Categories, 
key  to  post-Kantian  idealism, 
Lecture  I,  passim;  summary 
of,  24  ff . ;  four  distinct  ideas 
of,  31  ff. ;  need  of  supplement- 
ing, 47  ff. ;  revision  of,  by 
post-Kantians,  49  ff . ;  sug 
gesting  dialectical  method, 
90  ff.;  dialectical,  in  Hegel's 
Phenomenology,  145 ;  truth  of, 
253  ff. 

Deism,  70. 

Dialectical  Method,  The,  The 
Concept  of  the  Absolute  and, 
Lecture  III,  passim;  prelimi- 
nary analysis  of,  77ff.;  in 
relation  to  Platonic  dialogues, 
78  f.;  to  Kant's  antinomies, 
§0  f . ;  exemplified  in  litera- 
ture, 82  ff. ;  belongs  rather  to 
will  than  emotions,  83  ff. ;  in 
relation  to  pragmatism,  85  f . ; 
in  Schelling,  Lecture  IV, 
passim;  in  relation  to  ideal- 
istic theory  of  self -conscious- 
ness, 90  ff. ;  as  a  theory  of 
truth,  94  ff.;  Fichte's  formu- 
lation of,  96  ff.;  exemplified 
in  nature,  as  seen  by  Schell- 
ing, 101  ff.;  as  exemplified 
in  Schelling 's  analysis  of  the 


self,  105  ff.;  in  Hegel's  Phe- 
nomenology, 143  ff . ;  negativ- 
ity as  the  principle  of,  154; 
in  relation  to  Hegel's  Abso- 
lute, 169;  in  relation  to 
Hegel's  theory  of  truth, 
214  ff. 

Diogenes,  179. 

Don  Quixote,  163,  195. 

Egypt,  210. 

Encyclopaedie,  Hegel's,  214. 

Error,  place  of,  in  Hegel's  phi- 
losophy, 214  ff. 

Evolution,  3,  65;  Schelling 's 
theory  of,  103 ;  in  Hegel,  170. 

Exist enz,  category  of,  225. 

Experience,  in  English  philos- 
ophy, 8;  Kant's  analysis  of, 
12  ff. ;  not  an  empirical  con- 
cept, 15  f. ;  in  relation  to 
' '  conceptual  construction, ' ' 
16  ff.,  to  Kant 's  categories, 
19  ff.,  to  a  virtual  self,  22; 
as  synthesis,  25  ff. ;  conditions 
of  possible,  27  ff.,  34. 

Faust,    Goethe's,    68,    82,    148, 

163,  186,  189  f. 
Fechner,  2. 
Fichte,  63,  68,  96  ff.,  125,  127, 

132,  136,  141,  143,  154,  158, 

160,  206  f. 
Fitzgerald,  180. 
Forgiveness     of     Sin,     Hegel's 

view  of,  175  f . 
Freedom    of    the    will,    Kant's 

postulate  of,  39. 

Galileo,  52. 

Germany,  her  mental  life  be- 
tween 1770  and  1805,  66  ff., 
141  ff.;  scholarship  in,  232  f. 

Geschichte  der  Deutschen  Phi- 
losophic, by  Zeller,  137. 


262 


INDEX 


Gestalten  des  Bewusstsevns,  in 
Hegel's  Phenomenology,  151 
ff.;  in  relation  to  categories 
of  thought,  220  ff. 

Gladstone,  89. 

Goethe,  68,  83  f.,  147  f.,  163, 
190. 

Green,  T.  H.,  2. 

Hall,  G.  Stanley,  236  f . 

Hamlet,  150. 

Haym,  137. 

Hegel,  his  political  conserva- 
tism, 137;  some  biographical 
facts  about,  141  f.;  formal 
statement  of  his  philosophy, 
156;  quoted  on  the  "Un- 
happy Consciousness,"  185; 
mature  system  of,  Lecture 
IX,  passim;  a  modern  Aris- 
totle, 214;  fortunes  of  his 
"school,"  232  ff.  See  also 
Phaenomenologie ;  Conscious- 
ness. 

Hegel  und  Seme  Zeit,  by  Haym, 
137. 

Heinrich  von  Ofterdingen,  by 
Novalis,  148. 

Herz,  56,  58. 

Hindoo,  mystics,  75;  philos- 
ophers, 107. 

Howison,  71. 

"Humanism,"  a  form  of 
Kantianism,  235. 

Hume,  8  ff . 

Idealism,  unpractical  and  fanr 
tastical,  67;  centering  about 
the  self  and  the  absolute,  70; 
in  intimate  relation  with 
pragmatism,  85  ff. ;  Hegel 's 
Phenomenology  as  expression 
of,  138  ff.,  161  ff.,  167  ff.;  in 
relation  to  Hegel's  theory  of 
truth,  214  ff.;  Hegel's,  sum- 


marized, 230  f . ;  Later  Prob- 
lems of,  and  its  Present  Posi- 
tion, Lecture  X,  passim;  its 
influence,  234  ff. ;  unsettled 
problems  of,  245  ff. ;  in  rela- 
tion to  pragmatism,  257  ff. 

Ideas,  Plato's,  80. 

Idee,  Hegel's,  221. 

Imitation  of  Christ,  The,  180. 

Imperialism,  stage  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  Phenomenology, 
203  ff. 

Individualism,  3  f . ;  romantic, 
68  ff.;  Nietzsche's,  68;  types 
of,  72,  75,  158,  165,  187. 

James,  William,  139,  181,  239. 
Japan,  202  f . 
Jean  Paul,  66. 

Kant,  as  student  of  physical 
science,  6;  his  view  of  mathe- 
matics, 10;  his  analysis  of 
experience,  12  ff.;  as  empiri- 
cist, 15 ;  his  categories,  19  ff. ; 
his  interpretation  of  nature, 
26  ff. ;  his  view  as  synthesis  of 
conflicting  motives,  35  ff . ;  his 
view  of  "things-in-them- 
selves, "  37  f . ;  his  view  of  the 
moral  self,  38  f.;  his  ethics, 
39  f .,  42  ff. ;  criticism  of  his 
table  of  categories,  46  f . ;  his 
deduction  in  a  nutshell,  48; 
his  ontology,  55  ff . ;  his  phi- 
losophy reflecting  spirit  of 
age,  65  f . ;  his  unsolved  prob- 
lem of  the  self,  70  ff.;  his 
monism  and  his  pluralism,  72 ; 
his  contribution  to  religion, 
75;  his  antinomies  and  the 
dialectical  method,  80.  See 
also  Deduction  of  the  Cate- 


gories. 


263 


INDEX 


Knowledge,  Kant 's  conception 
of,  Lecture  I,  passim;  in  rela- 
tion to  Kant's  ontology,  55  S. 

"Law  of  the  Heart,  The,"  in 

Hegel's  Phenomenology,  191 

f. 

Leibnitz,  243. 
Life  of  Hegel,  by  Eosenkranz, 

137. 
Literature,     dialectics     of     the 

emotions  in,  82  ff. 
Locke,  8,  33,  236. 
Logik,  Hegel's,  213. 
Lotze,  2. 
Louis  XIV,  163. 

Macbeth,  148. 
Manfred,  Byron's,  83. 
Martineau,  2. 
Monism,  72. 
Mysticism,  85,   132. 

Napoleon,  72  f . 

Nature.       See    Philosophy    of 

Nature. 
Newton,  6,  52. 
Nietzsche,  68,  82,  140. 
Noumena,  56  ff. 
Novalis,  148. 

Oedipus,  202  f. 
Omar  Khayyam,  180. 

Parmenides,  78. 

Pearson,  Karl,  16. 

Phaedo,  78. 

Phaedrus,  78. 

Phaenomenologie  des  Geistes, 
Hegel's,  Lectures  VI,  VII, 
VIII,  passim;  estimate  of  its 
originality,  136  ff. ;  expression 
of  German  idealism,  138 ;  as  a 
study  of  human  nature,  139; 
historical  background  of,  141 


ff.;  philosophical  presupposi- 
tions of,  143;  its  dialectical 
method,  144  ff . ;  its  likeness  to 
literary  type -romances,  148 
ff.;  preface  to,  as  formal 
statement  of  Hegel's  philos- 
ophy, 156;  chronological  and 
logical  sequence  in,  162  ff . ; 
absolute  idealism,  outcome  of, 
166ff.;  results  of,  summa- 
rized, 214  ff.;  on  truth, 
quoted,  215  f . 

Phenomenon,  as  objective,  42. 

Philosophy  of  Nature,  need  for, 
73  ff. ;  estimate  of  Schelling's, 
77;  Schelling's  account  of, 
101  ff. ;  nature  as  unconscious 
image  of  the  self,  104;  not 
emphasized  by  Hegel,  147. 

Plato,  69 ;  dialectical  method  in, 
78  f .,  154. 

"Pleasure  and  Destiny,"  in 
Hegel's  Phenomenology,  191. 

Pluralism,  72. 

Pragmatism,  2;  in  relation  to 
dialectical  method,  85  f. ;  in 
relation  to  Kantianism,  23o, 
to  idealism,  257  ff. 

Prometheus,  68. 

Protestantism,  3. 

Psychology,  38,  67. 

Reason,  success  and  failure  of, 
7,  10 ;  practical,  39  ff . ;  its 
meaning  in  pre-revolutionary 
days,  65;  relative  to  religion, 
75;  as  third  stage  in  Hegel's 
account  of  consciousness,  157, 
185  ff.;  as  absolute,  220  ff.; 
in  Hegel  and  Schopenhauer, 
245  ff. 

Religion,  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  the  Phenomenology,  209 
ff.;  of  Egypt,  210;  of  Greece, 


264 


INDEX 


211;  in  relation  to  philosophy, 

229. 

Republic,  Plato's,  78. 
Eevolution,  65  ff.,  72,  81  f .,  165, 

205  f. 

Eickert,  237. 

Robbers,  The,  Schiller's,  194. 
Romantic  irony,  68. 
Romantic    Movement,    3  f .,    64, 

68,  190. 
Eosenkranz,  137;  quoted,  155. 

St.  Augustine,  253. 

Sartor  Eesartus,  by  Carlyle, 
147  ff. 

Schelling,  estimate  of,  76  ff . ; 
the  dialectical  method  in,  Lec- 
ture IV,  passim;  contrast  to 
Fichte,  99  ff. ;  primarily  de- 
voted to  theoretical  construc- 
tion, 100;  his  interpretation 
of  nature  as  dialectical,  101 
ff.;  as  evolutionist,  103;  his 
interpretation  of  the  self  as 
productive  genius,  121,  as 
identity.  132  f .,  141  f .,  146  f ., 
145,  160,  167,  169,  177,  201, 
248. 

Schiller,  68,  194. 

Schlegel,  Friedrich,  68. 

School,  Hegelian,  fortunes  of, 
232  ff. 

Schopenhauer,  2,  140,  247  ff. 

Self -consciousness,  idealistic  the- 
ory of,  90 ff.;  Fichte 's  analy- 
sis of,  96  ff.;  Schelling 's 
interpretation  of,  105ff.;  ex- 
plained in  terms  of  social 
consciousness,  125  ff . ;  as  so- 
cial contrast  effect,  127  f.;  as 
second  stage  in  Hegel's  ac- 
count of  ' '  consciousness, ' ' 
156. 

Self,  the,  Kant's  conception  of, 


Lecture  II,  passim;  its  rela- 
tion to  "things  in  them- 
selves," 37  ff.;  as  moral 
agent,  38  f.;  the  ethical  "I" 
vs.  the  psychological  "me," 
39,  42  ff.;  as  originator  of 
experience,  44 ;  as  principle  of 
philosophy  for  post-Kantians, 
49  f.,  90;  in  relation  to  the 
Absolute,  54;  prominent  in 
German  thought,  67  ff. ;  es- 
sentially dialectical,  90  ff.; 
Fichte 's  analysis  of,  96  ff.; 
Fichte 's  ethical  conception  of, 
99;  Schelling 's  view  of  na- 
ture, in  terms  of,  101  ff. ; 
Schelling 's  analysis  of,  105 
ff.;  as  both  object  and  sub- 
ject, 108  ff. ;  artistic  activity, 
as  illustration  of,  121;  as 
creative  principle,  129;  as 
identity  of  conscious  and 
unconscious  processes,  123  ff . ; 
analogous  to  Hegel's  term 
Weltgeist,  149;  nature  of,  in 
contrast  with  Absolute,  171 
ff.;  as  "Everyman,"  188;  as 
Hegel's  Absolute,  221  ff. 

Skepticism,  179  f. 

Social  consciousness,  as  source 
of  self -consciousness,  125  ff. 

Socialism,  3. 

Socrates,  78  f.,  154. 

Sophist,  Plato 's,  78 

Sophocles,  202. 

Space,  in  relation  to  dialectical 
method,  80. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  7. 

Spinoza,  7. 

Spirit,  fourth  stage  in  Hegel's 
account  of  consciousness,  157 ; 
identical  with  Absolute,  174; 
as  organized  social  order. 
200  ff. 


265 


INDEX 


Spirit   of  Modern  Philosophy, 

The,  early  history  of  idealism 

in,  64. 
Stanzas   to   Augusta,   Byron's, 

quoted,  192  f . 
Stoicism,  178  f . 
"Storm  and  Stress,"  66,  82. 
Strauss,  2. 
Substance,  Kant's  category  of, 

20. 
Synthesis,  Fichte's  principle  of, 

98. 

Tennyson,  quoted,  189. 

Theaetetus,  78. 

' '  Things-in-themselves, ' '  prob- 
lem and  modification  of,  36 
ff.;  partly  inarticulate  and 
partly  ethical,  40 ;  revision  of, 
by  Kant 's  followers,  41  ff . 

Tieck,  Ludwig,  149. 

Time,  in  relation  to  dialectical 
method,  80. 

Tolstoi,  141. 

Truth,  as  dialectical,  94 ff.;  as 
the  whole,  155;  Hegel's  the- 
ory of,  summarized,  214  ff. 

Type-romance,  148. 


' '  Unhappy  Consciousness,  The, ' ' 

analysis  of,  180  ff. 
Unity,  of  experience,  53  f.,  57. 
Upanishads,  107. 

Varieties    of    Beligious    Expe- 
rience, by  James,  139. 
Vita  Nuova,  Dante's,  192. 
Vocation  of  Man,  Fichte's,  68. 
von  Hartmann,  2,  249. 

Walt  Whitman,  140  f . 

Weltgeist,  analogy  with  term 
self,  149;  Phenomenology,  as 
biography  of,  150;  "trans- 
migrations" of,  151  f.; 
viewed  as  "Everyman,"  188. 

Wilhelm  Meister,  Goethe's,  83, 
147  f. 

William  Lovell,  by  Tieck,  149. 

Windelband,  137. 

WirTclichkeit,  category  of,  225. 

Wissenschaftslehre,  Fichte  's,  63, 
96  ff. 

Wotan,  150. 

Zeller,  137. 


266 


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